General info about usb boot system
Generally, there are 2 types OS bootable from USB.
- Linux
- Window PE (pre-install environment)
Although other OS,like Mac OS X can boot from USB directly, but a Mac compatible system required.
common free linux usb boot tool
Multi-OS USB booting solution
- Download
- Multi-Boot USB app supports common linux distributions.
- run the “MultiBootISOs.exe” to load each ISO into the USB
- in USB, “splash.xpm.gz” is the splash; “menu.lst” is the text configure of Boot menu and look-up directory.
virtualbox method - portable virtual box app
virtualbox method - boot usb OS into virtual box
- find USB device NO.: run “diskmgmt.msc”, normally from 0 to 9.
- create vmdk file (virtual machine disk) that links to the USB device. (Windows as example)
REM sudo / admin rights REM physical drive 0-9 depends on your device NO. found, for this case, it is "PhysicalDrive1" VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename \VM\myUSB.vmdk -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive1
- launch VirtualBox with Admin rights to create a virtual machine that can use the VMDK file as a bridge to read USB device as internal device.
useful live linux iso
- GPartition: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
- OphCrack: http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/
- Ghost4Linux: http://g4l.sourceforge.net/
- CloneZilla: http://clonezilla.org/
Bootable USB drive system setup
- Dual OS bootable USB drive (in Chinese)