Bootable Usb

I have a really old laptop that I thought would work well as a dedicated Linux system. It’s been a very good travel laptop, but over the last few years it got slower and slower. I researched all the current Linux distros, and decided that MX Linux would be a good fit for the job.

I downloaded the MX Linux ISO onto my primary Windows system, and dug out an unused USB thumb drive. Some quick searches recommended Etcher as the preferred app for creating a bootable USB drive from an ISO on Windows.

After download and install, I opened Etcher - it has a better than average UI for an open-source tool. However, when I started the flash process, I got a UAC prompt for cmd, and no matter which option I chose the app would stop and report that the USB stick was inaccessible.

After some more searching, I came across Rufus. It has a familiar, old-school look-and-feel, and I was quickly able to start the flashing process. It takes a while to write a 2gb image to USB, but it completed in due course with no apparent errors.

I ejected the stick, plugged it into the old laptop’s port, and started it up. On old Dell Latitudes you use F1 to enter BIOS Setup, and F12 for a one-time-only boot menu. I did F12, selected the UEFI boot option, and the Live version of MX booted up quickly. I played around with the Live version, and then started up the main installer.

The installer runs some tests on the system - memory, BIOS settings, then disks - and reported that the primary disk was showing errors. I ran the diag tool that comes with MX Live, and sure enough the disk had some issues - enough of them to explain some of the recent slow-downs.

I decided to check on a replacement drive, and found a 512gb SATA SSD on Amazon for less than $50 - that’s hard to beat. It’ll be here tomorrow.

In the meantime, I may try to run some additional tests on the existing drive to see if it can be salvaged.