Drive safety

How Bootable protects drives

Bootable filters drives, shows the write plan, and checks the selected drive again before erasure.

Allowed drives

A drive must be whole, USB-attached or removable, writable, large enough, and separate from the system disk.

Fixed disks, partitions, and loop devices are not allowed.

The review shows the image, drive, method, operations, and data loss. A separate confirmation starts the write.

The CLI requires a confirmation phrase for the selected drive.

Before writing, Bootable finds the drive again by stable ID. It checks the capacity and safety flags, then unmounts its filesystems.

Confirm the physical drive yourself. Software cannot tell which device you intend to erase.

The desktop app and TUI run as the current user. A fixed helper gets administrator access only after you approve the write.

Linux uses a root-owned helper through PolicyKit.
macOS uses a root-owned helper and private Unix socket.
Windows validates the helper under Program Files and uses an authenticated loopback channel after UAC.

The Linux CLI uses the same drive checks when run as root.

Bootable stops managed tools, flushes raw output, and marks the drive incomplete. Rewrite the full image.

Bootable cannot identify the intended physical drive, make an untrusted image safe, guarantee compatibility, or recover erased data. Keep backups.

Read the full drive checks and platform rules.