How to create bootable USB drive with .iso file?

[midnite]

In Windows, I used to Rufus which it was quite handy. In Linux, I think UNetbootin is the most decent software for similar purpose.

(Actually I am using a 500GB 3.5" mechanical hard disk with SATA to USB connector as the "bootable USB drive". I do not have CDROMs or USB sticks around.)
(The ISO image I would like to boot is the HDDGURU's MHDD. I need to fix some hard disk problems.)

Here are the steps. But I experience some minor and major problems.

1. Initialise the disk with fdisk /dev/sdb
2. In fdisk, o to create a new empty DOS partition table.
3. In fdisk, Create a new partition with type 0b W95 FAT32. (It is a partition of 465.8GiB. Will it be a problem as it is too large?)
4. Format the partition with mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sdb1
5. mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/bootableUSB
6. emerge -av sys-boot/unetbootin. (Minor problem when man unetbootin: No manual entry for unetbootin.)
7. Launch UNetbootin with QT_X11_NO_MITSHM=1 targetdrive=/dev/sdb1 /usr/bin/unetbootin. (Minor problem: without targetdrive=/dev/sdb1, the "Drive" drop down menu is blank.)
8. In UNetbootin GUI, write Diskimage ISO (mhdd32ver4.6.iso) to USB Drive /dev/sdb1.
9. Here is the content of my bootable USB drive. I notice the ISO image is not copied to the drive. And all the files in the USB drive are smaller than the ISO image file. Is it a problem?
   

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   # ls -l mhdd32ver4.6.iso 
   -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1,533,952 Dec  8 11:53 mhdd32ver4.6.iso
   
   # ls -lAR /mnt/bootableUSB/
   /mnt/bootableUSB/:
   total 524,288
   -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 116,028 Dec  8 10:54 ldlinux.c32
   -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root  69,632 Dec  8 10:54 ldlinux.sys
   -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 179,600 Dec  8 10:54 libcom32.c32
   -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  23,680 Dec  8 10:54 libutil.c32
   -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  26,568 Dec  8 10:54 menu.c32
   -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root     145 Dec  8 10:54 syslinux.cfg
   -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root       0 Dec  8 10:54 ubnfilel.txt
   -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root       0 Dec  8 10:54 ubnpathl.txt

Major problem: Then I reboot my computer with the bootable USB drive, it is stuck in the UNetbootin boot menu, like the pictures in this thread. Someone was asking similar problem in another thread, but solution guide him to use another software.

[ian.au]

I've never used unetbootin so can offer no help with that.
I've made plenty of bootable USB's over the years, though, using the instructions in https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/LiveUSB
Perhaps try that method?

[APolozov]

IMHO best choice for booting into ISO image is https://ventoy.net/en/index.html

[Banana]

is the iso a bootable one?

Usually this should to it:

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dd bs=4M if=/paht/to/image.iso of=/dev/sdX conv=fdatasync

There is no need to mount or create a partition.

[shimbob]

Another vote for Ventoy. There's no need to extract anything and you can fill your boot drive with multiple .iso to choose at boot.

[psycho]

All the bootable USB iso files I've been using, for many years, have worked perfectly well with simply...

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cp file.iso /dev/sdx

...so I don't understand the need for the more complex instructions/tools/methods that others use, but I assume they're necessary on some systems.

[sabayonino]

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app-cdr/isoimagewriter (0.9-r1(5){tbz2}@08/12/2022): Write hybrid ISO files onto a USB disk

.iso and raw .img are supported

QT Library required.