FreeBSD: How To Install FreeBSD 8.x from USB Flash Drive

FreeBSD 8 can be installed from a USB memory stick. The required files can be downloaded via FTP:

i386: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/8.2/FreeBSD-8.2-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img
amd64: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/8.2/FreeBSD-8.2-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img

Insert the USB drive into the computer running Linux/FreeBSD and make sure it gets detect by the Kernel. You can check if the USB device got detect or not by running the following command:

dmesg

To write memstick.img to USB flash drive, enter:

dd if=FreeBSD-8.2-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img of=/dev/da0 bs=10240 conv=sync

or

dd if=FreeBSD-8.2-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img of=/dev/da0 bs=10240 conv=sync

for amd64.

Be careful to make sure you get the target (of=) correct. In our case, /dev/da0 is our usb drive.

That's it. Just plugin the USB drive to the computer on which you would like to install FreeBSD and set the BIOS to boot from USB drive.