Every time I want to do this it seems to take waaay longer than it should. Here then, the instructions in n steps under Linux.

sudo lsblk

Check and see which device is your USB stick. In the commands below, the device is listed as /dev/sdaX, but in reality it will be /dev/sdc probably. Be careful. If you mis-select the device you could potentially DESTROY all your data, in which case you will have to go through all five stages of data recovery grief, namely..

Denial = “It wasn’t me”

Anger = “How the fuck did I just do that? What was I thinking, cutting and pasting commands off the interwebs??”

Bargaining = “If I reboot the machine, the data will probably come back. Actually, thats almost a certainty.”

Depression = “Who suggested rebooting? What a stupid idea that was. I’m completely screwed. Why didn’t I do routine backups, especially of my thesis, my research, my entire music collection and all my photos since 2003.”

Acceptance = “Either fork out for a data recovery company or start fresh with nothing.”

Consider yourself warned. And also, make regular backups.

So, unmount the USB drive in question..

sudo umount /dev/sdX

Format it as FAT32

sudo mkdosfs -n 'usb-bootable' -I /dev/sdX -F 32

Run isohybrid..

sudo isohybrid /home/username/Downloads/systemrescuecd-x86-4.7.1.iso

Now burn the iso image to USB

sudo dd if=/home/username/Downloads/systemrescuecd-x86-4.7.1.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4k

Flush data to the USB drive..

sudo sync

And eject the USB drive..

sudo eject /dev/sdX

Finished. Your USB pendrive is bootable and ready to go.