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.

 

http://sourceforge.net/dbimage.php?id=167328

 

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.

Edited April 30, 2009 by somabc

[markcuk]

look for a program called flashboot