Endian Installation USB Flash Drive

This lesson describes how to create an installation USB drive for image files provided by Endian and to verify the integrity of the image file. The procedure applies to Windows users with XP, Vista, or Windows7 systems.

Requirements

You need the following to complete this lesson:

• .iso or .img image of an Endian Appliance.
• md5sum of the image.
• An USB Stick.

Warning
Some USB sticks may not work with Endian devices. In particular, some Endian hardware device might fail to recognise USB Sticks with size bigger the 2Gb. so you should try with one USB stick with smaller size.

Note: ISO image files
Starting with release 5.0, Endian releases installation images as .iso file, rather than .img. However, the following procedure and suggested software can be used also with .iso files.

It is assumed that you have an Endian image file and its correspondent md5sum checksum on your computer. This lesson takes as example an image of an edge 3.0 and its correspondent md5sum file saved in C:\:

In order to create the Endian installation USB flash drive you need to download an application that allows to burn img and iso images to USB flash drives disks, like win32 Disk Imager.

Download the file and extract its content into a suitable directory, like C:\Win 32 Disk Imager.

Why use md5 checksum?
Md5 is an algorithm widely used to verify data integrity. In a few words, it receives a file as input and produces an hexadecimal string that can be used to verify that a downloaded file is the correct one and it has not been corrupted (e.g., due to a faulty download).

For every software image produced, Endian supplies the calculated md5sum in a separated file. To verify that your image file has not been corrupted, verify that the string contained in the txt file (open the file e.g. with notepad) is the same produced by the win32 Disk Imager tool (see the procedure below, step 6).

Procedure – IMG files
The procedure is straightforward to follow. Please use the following screenshot as reference.

• Make sure that you have administrative rights on your PC.
• Plug a USB flash drive in your computer: the software application should detect the USB flash drive automatically.
• Start the Win32 Disk Imager tool.
• Click on the folder icon to select the image that should be burned.
• Click on the drop-down menu on the right to select the USB disk device.
• In the middle of the window, the md5sum checksum is calculated. If the string is the same as the one in the txt file openend in notepad (see screnshot in section Why use md5 checksum? above),
• Click on Write to start the burning process.
• Wait for the application to copy the image on the USB Flash Drive (this may take a few minutes).

Procedure – ISO files
The only difference with the procedure explained in the previous section is at step 4: Here, make sure that you chose *.* in the drop-down menu Files of type:

At this point you can choose the .iso file and continue the procedure from point 5.

Troubleshooting
Some USB Flash Drives may not be compatible and prevent appliances from booting. In this case you may have to try with a different USB Flash Drive model.
The partition is often Linux-based, so Windows may not detect it.

Src: https://help.endian.com/hc/en-us/articles/218146798-Endian-Installation-USB-Flash-Drive