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# Testing an ISO or an USB bootable drive with QEMU
- URL: https://www.bagz.fr/testing-an-iso-or-an-usb-bootable-drive-with-qemu/
- Published: 2014-12-02T09:26:19.000Z
- Updated: 2014-12-02T09:26:19.000Z
- Author: bgazui
- Tags: Linux, #Migrated-1790668826633, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-09-29 08:00

If you want to test an ISO image or a bootable USB drive you just prepared, you can do it very easily thanks to QEMU with a simple command-line. Obviously, you will need to install the QEMU package first so you can use it. For example on a Debian-based distribution:sudo apt-get install qemu qemu-system qemu-utils

For USB drive testing, plug the USB key and get the name of device (checking *dmesg* if necessary and ensure that the drive is not mounted automatically). Afterwards you can launch:

sudo /usr/bin/qemu-system-x86\_64 -hda /dev/sdb -m 1G

For ISO testing, just get the path of your ISO image and launch:

sudo /usr/bin/qemu-system-x86\_64 -cdrom /path/to/image.iso -m 1G

It will launch an emulator with 1G RAM (*\-m* option). As it's emulated, there is a lot of things that won't work and I recommend you to use this only for simple testing purposes (no network access or usb port enabled by default for example). All of these can surely be configured with a more complete command-line, but I invite you to read full QEMU documentation for doing that.

Here you go ;) !