I recently used Rufus to flash Linux Mint onto my USB drive and now I'm looking to experiment with other distributions. Should I go through the same flashing process again, or do I need to clear everything off the USB drive before flashing a new OS?
4 Answers
If you plan to write another ISO to your USB, you don't have to format it first! Just flash the new distro directly over the old one and you're good to go.
You can definitely use GParted for this! Just create a new GPT scheme on your USB, set up your partitions, and format them to the filesystem you want. It's quite straightforward!
You have options! You can wipe the drive clean or just install distros side by side if you want to. I've crammed six different distros onto one laptop before, just for fun. It ended up being useless since I rarely used any of them, but it was a cool experiment!
Another tip! You could use Ventoy to have multiple distros on the same USB drive without needing to wipe it every time. It makes the whole process a lot easier.
But make sure to check the device identifier first—like /dev/sdb1—so you're formatting the right drive!