On Mon, 1 Sep 2014 00:48:25 Joseph wrote:

> In my case I was doing as root:
> dd if=/home/joseph/Downloads/install-amd64-minimal-20140529.iso of=/dev/sda
> bs=4096 sync
> 
> and the usb was unmounted.

As mentioned by Alan, you haven't clarified what you meant by "1MB USB stick" 
- trying to put a ~250MB image on a 1MB stick simply isn't going to work.

Can you show the exact command(s) and any errors that are presented when you 
are doing this (feel free to redact any sensitive information that may be 
present)?

--
wraeth