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How to make bootable USB flash drive? 1
- Thread starter cheerful
- Start date
cheerful,
As you have support for booting from USB, select the os that you want & have installed.
Image it to the USB drive. Shutdown. restart enter BIOS and set to boot to USB and that should do it.
rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all
As you have support for booting from USB, select the os that you want & have installed.
Image it to the USB drive. Shutdown. restart enter BIOS and set to boot to USB and that should do it.
rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all
How to boot from a USB device ...
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1
- #4
I went down the same route very recently. After a lot of trial and error (mostly error <grin>), it seems to be dependent on what you want to use it for, i.e. to boot into DOS (including the equivalent of floppy boot disks) or to boot into Windows. It also seems to be dependendent on the make of USB flash drive.
Booting into DOS running from the USB flash drive is fairly easy but my experience is that you can't rely on the way that the USB flash drive is formatted by the manufacturer. Instead, you appear to need to re-format the USB flash drive in a special way in order to make them bootable.
I've used a freeware HP USB Formatter utility successfully on some USB flash drives I have access to (e.g. Buffalo 512Mb, Disgo 128Mb, ClipDrive 128Mb and HyperDrive 256Mb)... but not all.
The HP USB formatter is available from here:
You might also find the freeware 'BootFlashDOS' and 'PeToUSB' on the site useful.
Although it's not freeware, FlashBoot (available from might also be worth a look at.
Unfortunately the HP formatter wasn't able to make a Buffalo 1Gb flash drive bootable. Fom what I read on the 'net, it looks like there may be 2 different types of USB flash drives internally. Some behave like USB floppy disks or CDROM drives whilst the one I'm still having problems with seems to behave like a USB hard disk.
I've also found that PC's built within the last 18 months to 2 years can usually be booted from the USB flash drive whilst older PC's (especially those with only USB 1.1 ports) often won't recognise the USB flash drive as a bootable device, even when the option to boot from USB floppy disk is present.
Hope this info helps...
Booting into DOS running from the USB flash drive is fairly easy but my experience is that you can't rely on the way that the USB flash drive is formatted by the manufacturer. Instead, you appear to need to re-format the USB flash drive in a special way in order to make them bootable.
I've used a freeware HP USB Formatter utility successfully on some USB flash drives I have access to (e.g. Buffalo 512Mb, Disgo 128Mb, ClipDrive 128Mb and HyperDrive 256Mb)... but not all.
The HP USB formatter is available from here:
You might also find the freeware 'BootFlashDOS' and 'PeToUSB' on the site useful.
Although it's not freeware, FlashBoot (available from might also be worth a look at.
Unfortunately the HP formatter wasn't able to make a Buffalo 1Gb flash drive bootable. Fom what I read on the 'net, it looks like there may be 2 different types of USB flash drives internally. Some behave like USB floppy disks or CDROM drives whilst the one I'm still having problems with seems to behave like a USB hard disk.
I've also found that PC's built within the last 18 months to 2 years can usually be booted from the USB flash drive whilst older PC's (especially those with only USB 1.1 ports) often won't recognise the USB flash drive as a bootable device, even when the option to boot from USB floppy disk is present.
Hope this info helps...
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