When starting Tails from an external hard disk or problematic USB stick, Tails might return the following error message:

Unable to find a medium containing a live file system

In such cases, choose the External Hard Disk entry if it appears in the Boot Loader.

If the External Hard Disk entry does not appear in the Boot Loader, then remove the live-media=removable boot option. To do so, see our instructions on modifying the boot options using the Boot Loader.

Choosing the External Hard Disk entry in the Boot Loader or removing the live-media=removable boot option might be dangerous. If an adversary had access to the computer and installed a malicious Tails on the internal hard disk, the computer might start on the malicious Tails instead of on the USB stick.