# Booting from a USB Drive

For systems without CD drive, the NixOS live CD can be booted from a USB stick. You can use the `dd` utility to write the image: `dd if=path-to-image of=/dev/sdb`. Be careful about specifying the correct drive; you can use the `lsblk` command to get a list of block devices. If you're on macOS you can run `diskutil list` to see the list of devices; the device you'll use for the USB must be ejected before writing the image.

The `dd` utility will write the image verbatim to the drive, making it the recommended option for both UEFI and non-UEFI installations. For non-UEFI installations, you can alternatively use unetbootin. If you cannot use `dd` for a UEFI installation, you can also mount the ISO, copy its contents verbatim to your drive, then either:

- Change the label of the disk partition to the label of the ISO (visible with the blkid command), or

- Edit `loader/entries/nixos-livecd.conf` on the drive and change the `root=` field in the `options` line to point to your drive (see the documentation on `root=` in the kernel documentation for more details).

- If you want to load the contents of the ISO to ram after bootin (So you can remove the stick after bootup) you can append the parameter `copytoram`to the `options` field.