How to make a USB multi-Bootable Device?

Dorfdad · 03 Aug 2009

I have a 16GB USB drive sitting here calling me.. I have a project I want to do with it as well.

I would like to have Windows 7 32bit, Windows 7 64bit, Hirens Boot CD 9.9, and Windows XP all on the usb drive for install.

So basically I would boot from USB a menu would pop up and a choice of one of these 4 systems would be presented. Once you pick that Disk it would bootup to the install or application selected.

I was able to make a x32 USB Windows 7 stick but im confussed how to do a menu and allows multiple bootable images on a USB drive.

Can someone help me out. This would be a great community project as well.

RootAdmin · 04 Aug 2009

How much space is windows 7 currently taking up on the usb drive?, and you want to add another, larger copy to it, as well as two other os's?

_Good_luck_!!!!

mickey megabyte · 04 Aug 2009

i used to play around with syslinux many moons ago; and after a lot of reading readme's, cursing and head-scratching, i managed to succesfully make a multi-boot dvd including an xp setup/install partition.

Tip

you have to put on the geekiest hat you can find before you attempt this!

a program called usb multiboot might be useful as well, but i failed in my attempt to make a usb-multiiboot-including-vista-install-partition thumb drive - my hat wasn't geeky enough, it seems - i haven't even attempted a 7 version yet.

if you succeed, i would be very interested to find out how you did it!

best of british luck to you, old boy!

StFenix · 24 Aug 2009

Joined just to answer your question. :)

Quite Sorry to Bring up such an old thread, but being a person who has huge need of these sorts of functions on a USB drive, I can at least point the man in the right direction.

I myself have been scouring the Internet for about 2 months in order to get the solutions to my problems, and indeed I've always gone back to some google Results that I've had to revolve my life around in order to be moderately successful, And I'm convinced that both of these programs shall be able to create the USB Drive I'm looking for (One that will setup either windows XP SP3, or Windows XP x86-64 SP2) And I've been working on getting one to work in this regard. For your needs, I do believe it may be possible to do everything you wish with the exception of the Multiple Windows 7 Installs thanks to some strange requirement that these installs be on seperate partitions, but I may be mistaken, if you get these to work well, please feel free to give me a post as well as to what you've gotten through them, I would be interested to see a successful setup of yours.

The First Program: USB_Multiboot.cmd
How to install XP from USB

Seems to be an older way to create such a disk from BartPEtoUSB but with support for multiple booting options, this one I'm fairly unfamiliar with because I've had more luck with the second.

The Second Program: WINsetupfromUSB
How to install from USB- WinSetupFromUSB with GUI

This is a GUI Driven program that combines several Command Line Applications into one fairly nicely packaged program: It is fairly self-explanatory, and is the one I'm currently trying to use for my purposes.

Here's to some success.

Edit: I've ran the second program Twice to get my desired results, the Program itself will recognize that there is another installation and ask to rename it, this is fine, as it will keep the original boot options and they will function the same. So I can say that this method works, even when creating the drive in a x64 Environment since the BartPEtoUSB method seems to sometimes have issues with that.