Parted Magic comes with its own USB installer. It is inside the ISO you downloaded, it is signed, and it needs nothing else installed to use it. This guide covers that first, then the DVD method, then the third-party tools you may already prefer — those all still work, and nothing here takes them away.

If none of this makes sense, start here: Why Your Flash Drive Won’t Boot

⚠️ Warning: Writing Parted Magic to a USB flash drive erases everything already on that drive. Back up anything you need first, and double-check you have selected the right drive.

Install Parted Magic on a USB Flash Drive

The Parted Magic USB Installer ships in the install folder of the ISO, in a build for Windows and packages for Linux. Because it comes from the same ISO you are writing, it is always the matching version, and there is nothing to download, evaluate or trust from anyone else.

It also removes the question that trips most people up. The stick it writes is a single FAT32 partition that boots on legacy BIOS and on UEFI with Secure Boot enabled, so there is no MBR-or-GPT choice to get wrong. It checks every file it wrote before it tells you it succeeded, and because the stick stays writable, Save Session works on it.

Windows: the installer is inside the ISO

Windows 10 and 11 open an ISO file by themselves. You do not need any other software.

  1. Double-click the .iso file you downloaded. Windows mounts it and File Explorer opens it as a drive. (If double-clicking does nothing, right-click the file and choose Mount.)
  2. Open the install folder.
  3. Double-click pmusb-gui.exe. Windows asks for permission, because writing to a drive requires administrator rights. Click Yes. The program is signed by Parted Magic LLC, so the publisher is named in that prompt.
  4. Choose the Parted Magic ISO — the same .iso file you downloaded.
  5. Choose your flash drive from the list. Only removable drives are shown. Check the size and the model against the drive you meant.
  6. Click Start and confirm. Leave Verify after writing ticked — it re-reads every file off the stick and compares it, which takes about a minute and is the difference between a stick that looks written and one that is.
  7. Eject and boot. Use Safely Remove Hardware, then start the target computer and press the boot menu key (F12, F9, Esc or Del, depending on the manufacturer — see the table below).

The whole thing takes two to five minutes on a typical stick. If you would rather not run it from the mounted ISO, copy pmusb-gui.exe to your desktop first and run it from there — it is a single self-contained program with no installer of its own.

Upgrading an existing stick: point it at a stick you have already written and it replaces the Parted Magic files in place, so you do not have to start over for a new release.

On Windows 7, which cannot open an ISO on its own, extract the install folder from the ISO with 7-Zip and run pmusb-gui.exe from there, or use one of the other installers below.

Linux: install the package from the ISO

The same install folder carries a package for each of the main families. Mount the ISO, then install the one that matches your distribution:

sudo mount -o loop,ro pmagic_26.09.iso /mnt
cd /mnt/install

# Debian, Ubuntu and derivatives
sudo apt install ./pmusb_0.1-2_amd64.deb

# Fedora, RHEL and derivatives
sudo dnf install ./pmusb-0.1-2.x86_64.rpm

# Slackware
sudo installpkg pmusb-0.1-x86_64-2_pmagic.txz

You then get Parted Magic USB Installer in your applications menu. Launch it from the desktop rather than over SSH — it asks for administrator rights through your desktop’s own password prompt, and that prompt cannot appear in a remote shell.

There is a command-line version too, pmusb, for scripting or for a machine with no desktop. Run pmusb --help for its options. The full source is in the same folder as pmusb-0.1-src.tar.gz; the installer is GPL-2.0-or-later.

It gets back the flash drive dd turned into a disc

Write any ISO to a flash drive with dd — or with a tool set to copy the raw image — and the whole device becomes one read-only ISO 9660 filesystem. That is a copy of a DVD, and it behaves like one. A 64 GB stick then shows up as a small read-only volume with the rest of the drive unallocated, Windows offers to format it and then refuses, and the capacity you paid for appears to be gone.

Nothing is actually wrong with the stick. The old boot record and the read-only filesystem are simply sitting at the front of it, and nothing has told the drive it is a drive again. People usually end up in diskpart clean or fdisk to get out of this, which is a lot to ask of someone who just wanted a boot disk.

Point our installer at that stick and it fixes itself on the way past. Before it writes anything it clears the first and last megabyte of the device — the old partition table, the old boot records, and any stale backup GPT header left at the far end — and then lays down a fresh partition that runs from the start of the drive to the end of it. You get the entire capacity back as an ordinary writable FAT32 drive, and because it is writable, Save Session works on it.

No wiping, no partitioning, no command line. Pick the stick, click Start.

macOS

There is no macOS build of our installer yet. On a Mac, use balenaEtcher below — it works correctly and produces a bootable stick.

What You’ll Need to Install Parted Magic

ItemDetails
Parted Magic ISOThe .iso file downloaded from partedmagic.com after purchase
USB flash drive4 GB minimum — will be completely erased
The USB installerAlready in the install folder of that ISO. Nothing to download.
Blank DVDDVD-R or DVD+R disc (only for the DVD method)
DVD burnerInternal or external DVD writer (only for the DVD method)

If You Prefer a Different Installer

Parted Magic is a standard hybrid ISO, and the tools you already know still write it correctly. If you have a workflow built around one of these, keep it.

Install Parted Magic on Windows with Rufus

Rufus is free and portable, and it has been the long-standing way to do this on Windows.

  1. Download and run Rufus from rufus.ie. No installation needed — just run the .exe.
  2. Insert your USB drive. Rufus detects it in the Device dropdown. If several drives are connected, make sure you pick the right one.
  3. Click SELECT and browse to your Parted Magic .iso file. Rufus then auto-configures the settings.
  4. Partition scheme: choose MBR or GPT depending on the target computer (see the note below).
  5. Click START. If prompted, select “Write in ISO Image mode (Recommended)”, confirm the warning, and wait for it to finish.
  6. Eject the drive and boot the target computer from USB.
Rufus settings to install Parted Magic on a USB flash drive

⚠️ MBR vs. GPT: the partition scheme you choose in Rufus decides which systems can boot the drive. MBR works on legacy BIOS systems and most UEFI systems with CSM enabled; GPT works on modern UEFI systems but will not boot an older BIOS-only machine. Neither is guaranteed on every computer — it depends on the target firmware. If the drive does not appear in the boot menu, recreate it with the other scheme. When in doubt, MBR is the safer first choice. Our own installer does not ask this question: the stick it writes boots both.

Install Parted Magic on macOS & Linux with balenaEtcher

balenaEtcher is free, runs on macOS and Linux, and is the simplest route on a Mac.

  1. Download and install balenaEtcher for your platform.
  2. Launch it, click Flash from file, and browse to your Parted Magic .iso.
  3. Click Select target and choose your USB flash drive. Check the name and size to avoid the wrong disk.
  4. Click Flash!, enter your password if prompted, and wait for the write and verification to finish.
  5. Eject. macOS may show a “disk not readable” dialog — this is normal. Click Eject, not Initialize.
  6. Boot: on a Mac hold Option (⌥) at startup; on a PC press the boot menu key.

⚠️ Why not dd? The dd command will write the ISO to a flash drive, but it creates a read-only image of the disc. The Parted Magic Save Session feature then cannot work, because the drive has no writable space — and the stick keeps behaving like a small read-only disc until something repartitions it. Our installer, Rufus and Etcher all handle this correctly; dd does not. If a drive is already in that state, see getting it back.

Install Parted Magic with Ventoy (Multi-ISO USB)

Ventoy turns a USB drive into a multi-boot launcher. Instead of dedicating a whole flash drive to one ISO, you install Ventoy once and then copy ISO files onto the drive, choosing which to boot from Ventoy’s menu at startup.

  1. Install Ventoy from ventoy.net onto your flash drive. This formats it with a small Ventoy boot partition and a large data partition.
  2. Copy the Parted Magic .iso onto the Ventoy data partition, in the root or in a subfolder — either way, Ventoy finds it.
  3. Boot from the drive and select Parted Magic from Ventoy’s menu.

Save Session on Ventoy: Parted Magic fully supports Save Session when booted from a Ventoy drive. It detects the Ventoy environment at boot and mounts the writable data partition for session storage, so saved settings, installed packages and file changes persist across reboots just as they do on a dedicated stick. Ventoy supports both MBR and GPT installation modes, and Parted Magic can sit alongside other bootable ISOs on the same drive.

Install Parted Magic from a DVD

Burn the Parted Magic ISO on Windows

Windows 10 and 11 have a built-in ISO burner, so no extra software is needed.

  1. Insert a blank DVD-R into your disc drive.
  2. Right-click the Parted Magic .iso and select Burn disc image. If that option is missing, use Right-click → Open with → Windows Disc Image Burner.
  3. Select your DVD drive, optionally tick “Verify disc after burning,” and click Burn.
  4. Boot from the disc on the target computer via the boot menu.

On older Windows versions, ImgBurn also works well — use its “Write image file to disc” mode.

Burn the Parted Magic ISO on macOS

  • Finder: right-click the .iso → Burn to Disc…
  • Disk Utility: File → Open Disk Image → select the ISO → click Burn
  • Terminal: hdiutil burn /path/to/pmagic.iso

Hold C during startup to boot directly from the disc.

Burn the Parted Magic ISO on Linux

Your optical drive is usually /dev/sr0; check with lsblk | grep rom.

sudo growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/sr0=/path/to/pmagic.iso

# or:
sudo wodim dev=/dev/sr0 -v -dao /path/to/pmagic.iso

Graphical options include Xfburn, Brasero and K3b — use their “Burn Image” mode. Then boot from the disc via the BIOS/UEFI boot menu.

BIOS / UEFI Boot Configuration

The computer should boot from your USB or DVD automatically. If it does not, press the boot menu key immediately after powering on:

ManufacturerBoot Menu Key
DellF12
HPF9 or Esc
LenovoF12 or Fn+F12
ASUSF8 or Esc
AcerF12
MSIF11
Apple MacOption (⌥)

Then select the entry matching your USB drive name, “USB HDD,” “Removable Devices,” or your DVD drive.

Secure Boot: Parted Magic ships with a signed boot loader, so it works with Secure Boot enabled. There is no need to turn it off.

Verifying Your Download

Compare the ISO’s checksum against the value on the download page to confirm the file did not get corrupted in transit:

Windows (PowerShell):  Get-FileHash .\pmagic_*.iso -Algorithm SHA256 | Format-List
macOS / Linux:         sha256sum pmagic_*.iso

Every release is also signed. Beside the ISO you will find pmagic_26.09.iso.asc, a detached OpenPGP signature, and CHECKSUMS.txt.asc, the checksum list clearsigned. Import the public key from partedmagic.com/store/GPG-KEY — it also ships inside the ISO as install/GPG-KEY — and then:

gpg --import GPG-KEY
gpg --verify pmagic_26.09.iso.asc pmagic_26.09.iso

The signing key is RSA 4096, fingerprint F674 69C6 8A0B 8FC1 70B2 B1B5 6C49 227C 1EBA 24AD. Check that against what you imported.

Troubleshooting Your Parted Magic Install

“Another program is using the drive”

  • Windows would not hand over exclusive access to the drive. Close any File Explorer window showing it, along with anything else reading from it, and click Start again.
  • Antivirus software that scans removable media on insert can hold the drive for a few seconds after you plug it in. Wait, then retry.

My flash drive is not in the list

  • Click Refresh after plugging it in.
  • The installer lists removable drives only, which is deliberate — it is how it avoids writing over your hard disk. Some USB SSD enclosures report themselves as fixed drives and will not appear.
  • Drives with 4096-byte sectors are refused, because the BIOS boot loader cannot address them.

USB drive not detected at boot

  • Try a USB 2.0 port (black) instead of USB 3.0 (blue) — they are more compatible at boot time.
  • Check that USB boot is enabled in BIOS.
  • Try enabling CSM/Legacy mode if the system does not show the USB in the UEFI boot menu.
  • If you used Rufus, recreate the drive with the other partition scheme — MBR instead of GPT, or the reverse. Not all firmware supports both. A stick written by our own installer boots either way, so this step does not apply to it.

DVD fails to burn or verify

  • Use quality media (Verbatim, Taiyo Yuden).
  • Burn at a slower speed (4x–8x) for better reliability.
  • Try a different burning application if the default one fails.

“Boot device not found” or blank screen

  • The ISO was probably copied as a file rather than written as a disk image. Use a proper ISO writing tool — do not drag the .iso onto the drive.
  • Re-download the ISO and verify the SHA-256 checksum.

Parted Magic boots but doesn’t detect a disk

  • Some NVMe or RAID controllers need specific drivers. Try switching the SATA mode from RAID to AHCI in BIOS before booting.
  • If that does not help, contact us via the support page.