How to make a bootable USB memory stick?

[button_ripple]

Can anyone give me an idiots guide to making a bootable usb memory stick? I have tried a few things I found on Google but they don't seem to work!!

Would prefer something free !

[ICT_GUY]

HP Drive Key Boot Utility - HP Business Support Center

Will take a bootable image or Floppy and make your usb key bootable.

[MatthewL]

Download the files here. The HP one makes it bootable and the other one is the Windows 98 boot disk files which I use. Use this for making mine bootable for using ghost.

[petectid]

Can anyone give me an idiots guide to making a bootable usb memory stick? I have tried a few things I found on Google but they don't seem to work!!

Would prefer something free !

Don't forget to set your bios, enable USB boot, you shouldn't have much trouble then?

[somabc]

There is also UNetbootin - Homepage and Downloads

[Hightower]

We use the HP tool, but our problem is the USB disk is only 1.44Mb. Is there anyway it can be made bootable yet keeping it at a decent size for extra files?

[SteveLaw]

Anything in particular you want to boot? If you go for a Linux boot USB stick most of the distros that are set up for this (look to the small ones - DSL, Puppy, Slax or specialst ones like Parted Magic) make the stick bootable as part of the setup process.

[Hightower]

Well, we're CC3 so its a CC3 build disk that we copy to USB. It works a treat, but would be handy if it was bigger than 1.44Mb so we could put more drivers on it/other software such as ghost.

[somabc]

Unetbootin can build you a FreeDOS boot disk automatically.



The current version has built-in support for automatically downloading and loading the following distributions, though installing other distributions is also supported:

* Ubuntu (and official derivatives)
o 6.06 LTS
o 6.10
o 7.04
o 7.10
o 8.04 LTS
o 8.10
o 9.04
o Daily CD Images
* Debian
o Stable/Etch
o Testing/Lenny
o Unstable/Sid
* Linux Mint
o 3.1
o 4.0
o 5-r1
o 6
* openSUSE
o 10.2
o 10.3
o 11.0
o 11.1
o Factory
* Arch Linux
o 2007.08
* Damn Small Linux
o 4.4
* SliTaz
o Stable
o Cooking
* Puppy Linux
o 4.00
* gNewSense
o deltah-2.1
* FreeBSD
o 6.3
o 7.0
* NetBSD
o 4.0

* Fedora
o 7
o 8
o 9
o 10
o Rawhide
* PCLinuxOS
o 2007
o 2008
* Sabayon Linux
o 4-LiteMCE
* Gentoo
o 2007.0
o 2008.0
* MEPIS
o SimplyMEPIS 8
o AntiX 8
* Zenwalk
o 5.2
* Slax
o 6
* Dreamlinux
o 3.2
* Elive
o Development
* CentOS
o 4
o 5
* Mandriva
o 2007.1
o 2008.0
o 2008.1
* FaunOS
o 0.5.4
* Frugalware Linux
o Stable
o Testing
o Current

UNetbootin can also be used to load various system utilities, including:

* Parted Magic, a partition manager that can resize, repair, backup, and restore partitions.
* Super Grub Disk, a boot utility that can restore and repair overwritten and misconfigured GRUB installs or directly boot various operating systems
* Backtrack, a utility used for network analysis and penetration testing.
* Ophcrack, a utility which can recover Windows passwords.
* NTPasswd, a utility which can reset Windows passwords and edit the registry.
* Gujin, a graphical bootloader that can also be used to boot various operating systems and media.
* Smart Boot Manager (SBM), which can boot off CD-ROM and floppy drives on computers with a faulty BIOS.
* FreeDOS, which can run BIOS flash and other legacy DOS utilities.

[markcuk]

look for a program called flashboot