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A live USB is a USB flash drive or external hard disk drive containing a full operating system that can be booted. They are the evolutionary next step after live CDs, but with the added benefit of writable storage, allowing customizations to the booted operating system. Live USBs can be used in embedded systems for system administration, data recovery, or test driving, and can persistently save settings and install software packages on the USB device.

Many operating systems including Mac OS 9, macOS, Windows XP Embedded and a large portion of Linux and BSD distributions can run from a USB flash drive, and Windows 8 Enterprise has a feature titled Windows To Go for a similar purpose.

Background[edit]

To repair a computer with booting issues, technicians often use lightweight operating systems on bootable media and a command-line interface. The development of the first live CDs with graphical user interface made it feasible for non-technicians to repair malfunctioning computers. Most Live CDs are Linux-based, and in addition to repairing computers, these would occasionally be used in their own right as operating systems.

Personal computers introduced USB booting in the early 2000s, with the Macintosh computers introducing the functionality in 1999 beginning with the Power Mac G4 with AGP graphics and the slot-loading iMac G3 models.^[1] Intel-based Macs carried this functionality over with booting macOS from USB.^[2] Specialized USB-based booting was proposed by IBM in 2004 with Reincarnating PCs with Portable SoulPads and Boot GNU/Linux from a FireWire device.^[3][4]

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Team messaging, video meetings, and a business phone all in one easy to use app that lets you work from anywhere. The app is available on mobile for iOS and Android as well as desktop for Windows and Mac. Live USBs share many of the benefits and limitations of live CDs, and also incorporate their own. In contrast to live CDs, the data contained on the booting device can be changed and additional data stored on the same device. A user can carry their preferred operating system, applications, configuration, and personal files with them, making it easy to share a single system between. USB to Serial Adapter, Benfei 6 Feet USB to RS-232 Male (9-pin) DB9 Serial Cable, Prolific Chipset, Windows 10/8.1/8/7, Mac OS X 10.6 and Above 4.0 out of 5 stars 427 $8.99 $ 8.

Benefits and limitations[edit]

Live USBs share many of the benefits and limitations of live CDs, and also incorporate their own.

Benefits[edit]

• In contrast to live CDs, the data contained on the booting device can be changed and additional data stored on the same device. A user can carry their preferred operating system, applications, configuration, and personal files with them, making it easy to share a single system between multiple users.
• Live USBs provide the additional benefit of enhanced privacy because users can easily carry the USB device with them or store it in a secure location (e.g. a safe), reducing the opportunities for others to access their data. On the other hand, a USB device is easily lost or stolen, so data encryption and backup is even more important than with a typical desktop system.
• The absence of moving parts in USB flash devices allows true random access, thereby avoiding the rotational latency and seek time of hard drives or optical media, meaning small programs will start faster from a USB flash drive than from a local hard disk or live CD. However, as USB devices typically achieve lower data transfer rates than internal hard drives, booting from older computers that lack support for USB 2.0 or newer can be very slow.

Limitations[edit]

• LiveUSB OSes like Ubuntu Linux apply all filesystem writes to a casper filesystem overlay (casper-rw) that, once full or out of flash drive space, becomes unusable and the OS ceases to boot.
• USB controllers on add-in cards (e.g. ISA, PCI, and PCI-E) are almost never capable of being booted from, so systems that do not have native USB controllers in their chipset (e.g. such as older ones before USB) likely will be unable to boot from USB even when USB is enabled via such an add-in card.
• Some computers, particularly older ones, may not have a BIOS that supports USB booting. Many which do support USB booting may still be unable to boot the device in question. In these cases a computer can often be 'redirected' to boot from a USB device through use of an initial bootable CD or floppy disk.^[5][6][7]
• Some Intel-based Macintosh computers have limitations when booting from USB devices – while the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) firmware can recognize and boot from USB drives, it can do this only in EFI mode. When the firmware switches to 'legacy' BIOS mode, it no longer recognizes USB drives. Non-Macintosh systems, notably Windows and Linux, may not be typically booted in EFI mode and thus USB booting may be limited to supported hardware and software combinations that can easily be booted via EFI.^[8] However, programs like Mac Linux USB Loader can alleviate the difficulties of the task of booting a Linux-live USB on a Mac. This limitation could be fixed by either changing the Apple firmware to include a USB driver in BIOS mode, or changing the operating systems to remove the dependency on the BIOS.
• Due to the additional write cycles that occur on a full-blown installation, the life of the flash drive may be slightly reduced. This doesn't apply to systems particularly designed for live systems which keep all changes in RAM until the user logs off.^[9] A write-locked SD card (known as a Live SD, the solid-state counterpart to a live CD) in a USB flash card reader adapter is an effective way to avoid any duty cycles on the flash medium from writes and circumvent this problem. The SD card as a WORM device has an essentially unlimited life. An OS such as Linux can then run from the live USB/SD card and use conventional media for writing, such as magnetic disks, to preserve system changes; .

Setup[edit]

Various applications exist to create live USBs; examples include Rufus, Fedora Live USB Creator, UNetbootin, WinToUSB, Win32DiskImager, and YUMI, which works with a variety of distributions. A few Linux distributions and live CDs have ready-made scripts which perform the steps below automatically. In addition, on Knoppix and Ubuntu extra applications can be installed, and a persistentfile system can be used to store changes. A base install ranges between as little as 16 MiB (Tiny Core Linux) to a large DVD-sized install (4 gigabytes).

To set up a live USB system for commodity PC hardware, the following steps must be taken:

• A USB flash drive needs to be connected to the system, and be detected by it
• One or more partitions may need to be created on the USB flash drive
• The 'bootable' flag must be set on the primary partition on the USB flash drive
• An MBR must be written to the primary partition of the USB flash drive
• The partition must be formatted (most often in FAT32 format, but other file systems can be used too)
• A bootloader must be installed to the partition (most often using syslinux when installing a Linux system)
• A bootloader configuration file (if used) must be written
• The necessary files of the operating system and default applications must be copied to the USB flash drive
• Language and keyboard files (if used) must be written to the USB flash drive
• USB support in the BIOS’s boot menu (although there are ways to get around this; actual use of a CD or DVD can allow the user to choose if the medium can later be written to. Write Once Read Many discs allow certainty that the live system will be clean the next time it is rebooted.)

Knoppix live CDs have a utility that, on boot, allows users to declare their intent to write the operating system's file structures either temporarily, to a RAM disk, or permanently, on disk or flash media to preserve any added configurations and security updates. This can be easier than recreating the USB system but may be moot since many live USB tools are simple to use.

Full installation[edit]

An alternative to a live solution is a traditional operating system installation with the elimination of swap partitions. This installation has the advantage of being efficient for the software, as a live installation would still contain software removed from the persistent file due to the operating system’s installer still being included with the media. However, a full installation is not without disadvantages; due to the additional write cycles that occur on a full installation, the life of the flash drive may be slightly reduced. To mitigate this, some live systems are designed to store changes in RAM until the user powers down the system, which then writes such changes. Another factor is if the speed of the storage device is poor; performance can be comparable to legacy computers even on machines with modern parts if the flash drive transfers such speeds. One way to solve this is to use a USB hard drive, as they generally give better performance than flash drives regardless of the connector.

Microsoft Windows[edit]

Although many live USBs rely on booting an open-source operating system such as Linux, it is possible to create live USBs for Microsoft Windows by using Diskpart^{[citation needed]} or WinToUSB.^[10]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^'USB Info and Benefits of Dual-Channel USB'. Apple (published February 20, 2012). September 16, 2003. Archived from the original on May 12, 2013. Retrieved September 25, 2016. Bootable USB drives: A storage device such as a SuperDisk, Zip disk, or other USB storage drive can be used to hold a valid system folder and used at startup.
2. ^'Starting from an external USB storage device (Intel-based Macs)'. Apple. March 22, 2016. Archived from the original on May 22, 2016. Retrieved September 25, 2016.
3. ^Singer, Michael (August 15, 2005). 'IBM brains capture a PC's soul'. CNET. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on September 27, 2016. Retrieved September 25, 2016.
4. ^Honeyford, Martyn (July 15, 2004). 'Boot Linux from a FireWire device'. IBM DeveloperWorks. IBM. Archived from the original on January 17, 2007. Retrieved May 15, 2016.
5. ^Trevor (May 6, 2010). 'Boot from a USB Drive Even If Your BIOS Won't Let You'. How-To Geek. Archived from the original on September 23, 2016. Retrieved September 25, 2016.
6. ^'Plop Boot Manager'. February 7, 2012. Retrieved September 25, 2016.
7. ^'Use a Floppy to Boot USB Pendrive Linux'. Pen Drive Linux. 2007-11-21. Retrieved September 25, 2016.
8. ^knome (December 14, 2013). 'MactelSupportTeam/EFI-Boot-Mactel'. Ubuntu Community Help Wiki. Canonical Ltd. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved September 25, 2016.
9. ^'XFCE minimum install HD'. Linux Mint Forums. Archived from the original on September 27, 2016. Retrieved September 25, 2016. Live cd only write to the swap partition if your pc has one.
   If it doesn't it'll only use your RAM.
10. ^Gordon, Whitson. 'How to Run a Portable Version of Windows from a USB Drive'. Lifehacker. Gawker Media. Archived from the original on September 25, 2016. Retrieved September 25, 2016.

External links[edit]

Moving to a new Mac? Before taking these steps, you can use Migration Assistant to move your files from the old Mac to your new Mac.

Create a backup

Make sure you have a current backup of your important files. Find out how to back up your Mac.

Sign out of iTunes in macOS Mojave or earlier

If you're using macOS Mojave or earlier, open iTunes. From the menu bar at the top of the screen or iTunes window, choose Account > Authorisations > Deauthorise This Computer. Then enter your Apple ID and password and click Deauthorise.

Find out more about deauthorising computers that use your iTunes account.

Sign out of iCloud

If you're using macOS Catalina or later, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, then click Apple ID. Select Overview in the sidebar, then click Sign Out.

If you're using macOS Mojave or earlier, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, click iCloud, then click Sign Out.

You will be asked whether you want to keep a copy of your iCloud data on this Mac. You can click Keep a Copy, because you will be erasing your Mac later. Your iCloud data remains in iCloud and on any other devices that are signed in to iCloud with your Apple ID.

Sign out of iMessage

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If you're using OS X Mountain Lion or later, open the Messages app, then choose Messages > Preferences from the menu bar. Click iMessage, then click Sign Out.

Reset NVRAM

Shut down your Mac, then turn it on and immediately press and hold these four keys together: Option, Command, P and R. Release the keys after about 20 seconds. This will clear user settings from the memory and restore certain security features that may have been altered previously.

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Find out more about resetting NVRAM or PRAM.

Optional: Unpair Bluetooth devices that you’re planning to keep

If your Mac has been paired with a Bluetooth keyboard, mouse, trackpad or other Bluetooth device that you plan to keep, you can unpair it. This optional step prevents any accidental input or device connection when the Mac and Bluetooth device have separate owners but remain within Bluetooth range of each other.

If you're unpairing Bluetooth input devices from a desktop computer, such as an iMac, Mac mini or Mac Pro, you must plug in a USB keyboard and mouse to complete the remaining steps in this article.

To unpair a Bluetooth device, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, then click Bluetooth. Move your pointer over the device you want to unpair, then click the remove (x) button next to the device name.

Erase your hard drive and reinstall macOS

The best way to restore your Mac to its factory settings is to erase your hard drive and reinstall macOS.

After macOS installation has been completed, the Mac will restart and display a setup assistant asking you to choose a country or region. To leave the Mac in an out-of-box state, don't continue the setup process. Instead, press Command-Q to shut down the Mac. When the new owner turns on the Mac, the setup assistant will guide them through the setup process.

Irrespective of the model or condition of your device, we can turn it into something good for you and good for the planet: Find out how to trade in or recycle your Mac with Apple Trade In.