---
title: A forgotten GUI tool for flashing SD card and USB drives
date: 2018-08-01 11:49:25.151998 UTC
---
Working in IoT or with embedded computer, you won't less than 1 time need to write an OS image file to a SD card (so that you can install new OS to your device later).

For the tool to write image file, many websites often recommend [Etcher](https://etcher.io/), which is an [Electron](https://electronjs.org/)-based app. For Windows and Mac, that is fine. But for Linux, it sounds ridiculous to recommend such a tool. Not  only does Linux already have [GNOME Disks](https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Disks), which is most of time pre-installed, but also is it native, and hence, being lighter, running faster, having visual look consistent with other applications.

Here is the photo of _GNOME Disks_ writing image file to my SD card. The SD card appears with USB drive icon because I'm using a 3G USB dongle as card reader, after my laptop's built-in SD reader has been broken.

![GNOME-Disks writing SD card](https://quan-images.b-cdn.net/blogs/imgur/2026/N14MJyH.png)

And you can see, not only does it support writing to disk, but also can it do more with your disks. One of a things is that, it let you expand the partitions of the OS image to fit your SD card.

![Expand partition](https://quan-images.b-cdn.net/blogs/imgur/2026/RtoZdhT.png)