Say "No" to burning bootable CDs, DVDs from ISOs

Download and burn to CD the HD maker's diag/repair CD, boot and run full scan and you will have your answer: Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp.
-- and so said our friend gregrocker elsewhere in this forum, a day ago.

Nothing wrong and we have been habitually burning bootable CDs and DVDs from ISO images supplied by various vendors and software authors. A month ago even me would have done it - in fact I did burn the Seatools DOS a month back. But not any longer - not after I came to know the power of EasyBCD.

And so here we take-off. Fasten your seat belts.

Download and install EasyBCD 2.0.2 from here .

Create a folder in any convenient location on your HDD and move all the bootable ISOs into that folder.

Here I have them on my H Drive.



Now run EasyBCD.

1. Click on the "Add New Entry" tab on the left.

2. Select the "ISO Boot" Tab.

3. Give a name in the "Name" field.

4. In the "Mode" field select "Load from Memory"

5. Show it the path to the stored ISO which you would like to run on boot.

6. Click on "Add Entry"

You are done.



To check,

7. Click on "Edit Boot Menu" and you will find the bootable ISO name there.



If you want to rename or change the menu-show-time, do it and then click on "Save Settings". Close EasyBCD.

Next time you boot you will be presented with an option to boot into Windows or the bootable ISO.

Say goodbye to CD, DVD burning.

This is old stuff. Martin (severedsolo) made a tut for this way back.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/70559-boot-iso-without-burning-disk.html

But then again, theres comfort in cd/dvd because if the boot manager is corrupted etc., this method wont work.

Thanks for pointing out the existence of the tutorial on the subject by severedsolo.

I did do a search for "EasyBCD" but could not find anything to suggest it or I was too impatient to do a thorough search and so went on with it.

Of course, the system should be bootable and that is a basic requirement for using this method. But then how many times do we see people telling "download this bootable ISO and burn it to a a CD and carry on this test'' even when the system is bootable? I should have perhaps titled it " Say "NO" to burning bootable CDs and DVDs from ISOs when you need not.Try this first." .

I have now gone through the tutorial by severedsolo. IMO, tutorials of this nature need to be updated constantly using the current stable version instead of beta versions and I think my write-up fills that gap today. Even if I had encountered it, I would have gone through this write-up after referencing it to severedsolo and stating that this uses the current stable version.

Finally, I am not an expert but an ordinary user. I write from the user's perspective and from what I have learnt. The inspiration to use EasyBCD came after I read through the review on it in PC Magazine and then tried it, then started imaging my systems from the stored ISO.(My mini-PCs do not have optical drives) Seagate website tells burn the SeatoolsDOS ISO to a CD and I did it. Now I feel anguished. Experts tell burn it to a CD even when it need not be. I feel anguished. My write-up is a direct result of this anguish.

sometimes a bootable cd is handy, for those occasions when your pc won't boot.

I do enjoy having a copy of bootable material on a readily bootable media that is compatible with probably 99% of computers that I might encounter that I would need to boot from a disc.

Of course the nature of the beast usually requires you to run those bootable disks on somehow damaged Systems. The next best thing would be several ISOs on a DVD which boots into a menu first like a Swiss Army Knife for your friendly neighborhood technician.

options are always good.
I like options

Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

-DG

I can see where it might be useful to boot from an ISO stored on your HDD but for tools and other utilities that I may only use once in a great while, I'd still burn them to a CD. CD's are cheap, transportable and easyily stored so no big advantage to booting from the ISO.

My simple question/s to all.

Why not a bootable pen drive? I did install Windows 7 using a pen drive. I did flash the bios using a bootable pen drive. ( of course after scrounging the net for hours on end )

I still haven't put my heart into creating a bootable Paragon recovery pendrive and Shadow Protect recovery pendrive from their respective ISOs. It should be possible to create a bootable pendrive with any bootable ISO. True or false?

If true, then why not bootable pen drives? Aren't they more handy than CDs and DVDs? Should we be still burning CDs, DVDs and BDs and stack them up like we did with floppies?

I would like to be enlightened for I am not a geek.

Peronally, I can't find a flash drive case that holds more than six.

Bill2 said:

.......But then again, theres comfort in cd/dvd because if the boot manager is corrupted etc., this method wont work.

Click to expand...

Today I put my heart into it and as usual started scrounging on the net but then I suddenly remembered that I should have something on my PC itself. Months ago when I was grooming my Zotac Zbox and Zmag mini-PCs - which do not have optical drives -I have noted down anything connected with doing everything with the USB drive - and sure it was there. The Word document wherein I had cut and pasted something from some website read like this.

You need two utilities, the first is the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool. The latest version of this utility is v2.1.8 - I downloaded a copy from here. If you know that your USB pen drive is bootable then you don't need this utility. [Note: Two out of the three USB sticks I tried failed to boot before I used this tool - now all three boot just fine.] If your PC fails to boot from your USB stick even when the BIOS is set to boot from 'USB-Zip' then format the stick as FAT / FAT32 using this HP utility.

The second utility you need is UltraISO - the trial version of UltraISO can be downloaded from here. Simply open your bootable ISO image file in UltraISO and then from the menu select Bootable -> Write Disk Image... Make sure that your USB pen drive is selected as the 'Disk Drive:' and that the 'Write Method:' is set to USB-ZIP. Then just click on Write and in a few seconds you will have a bootable USB pen drive.

Voila - it really is that simple!

So what I did is here pictorially.(both the above utilities should be run as administrator)







The only hitch I faced was that when I selected the write method as USB Zip, the pendrive would not boot when USB zip was selected in the boot menu. So I wrote the bootable ISO again using USB HDD+.Selected USB HDD in the boot menu and voila my Paragon WinPE based recovery CD booted in full glory.
No more worries. Even if my hard disk bootsector is eaten away by any virus, I can boot from my USB pendrive and restore the system.

No more CD burning.

LiquidSnak said:

Peronally, I can't find a flash drive case that holds more than six.

Click to expand...

Six is one too many (for me)

The recently released (09 Sep 2010) Acronis True Image Home 2011, with its tighter integration with Windows 7, is an altogether different visual treat.

It facilitates writing the bootable recovery module into a removable drive - perhaps a pointer to the way the world will go.

Have been using memory sticks for this type of thing for some time now.
Found this very good app from Corsair, makes it very easy.
Liberkey has a lot of non-bootable apps, with the Corsair app you can add any ISO, edit the menu and you can have hundreds of bootable apps on one memory stick.
Mine has over 300 on it now.


It's quick and easy to do, you can add many helpful apps to the bootable memory stick.

The Seven forums tuts are good.

MS-DOS Bootable Flash Drive - Create

Install Windows 7 from USB Pen Drive Using Grub4Dos

Using the same source and Grub method mentioned above, the Corsair site has a nice version: How to Create the Ultimate Bootable USB Flash Drive.

Select the utility you wish to use and it will be loaded. The versatility of this tool is apparent once you begin to use it. The two default utilities, Memtest86+ and FreeDOS, are invaluable during system builds and trouble shooting.

Your flash drive can become a virtual toolbox of utilities that you can carry in your pocket as opposed to carrying archaic floppy disks or bulky CDs and DVDs. You also have the option of far greater storage capacity when using a USB flash drive. Your USB flash drive will still be fully functional as a removable storage drive. This is a great tool for testing memory or running programs from a DOS prompt such as firmware or BIOS updaters. The only real limits are the drive size and your creativity.

Click to expand...

After the bootable USB memory stick is prepared just add the program ISO file and do a quick edit of the menu, you'll have a menu list to choose from when you boot from it.
I added LiberKey (listed in FREE Great Programs for Windows 7) to mine, it has a lot of good support apps (305 applications) and a nice interface, not bootable but very nice selection of support programs.

You can add ISO files, edit the menu so they are listed.
Add any files/folders and still use you USB memory stick as you would normally.

New Search

If you want to write an ISO to a pen drive. Do a search for "Universal-USB-Installer". It writes ISO"s to a pen drive makeing it bootable. I found a version at Ubuntu 10.10 site.

I think it depends completely of what you want to do with the .iso. If, e.g., you want to install it on a virtual machine, it is usually better to keep the .iso in the system and load it directly from there. However, if you need a data recovery option because your system is on the blink, a bootable CD of a Linux distro may be handy. The same for programs like Partition Wizard.

Thanks to Dave76 for his valuable inputs, I completed my trials with Multiboot pendrive today.

I used Multiboot ISOs-USB-Creator 2.1.3.5 from here . The advantage is that the menu includes Boot First Hard Drive (HDD), Restart and Shutdown options apart from the Custom Multiboot entries.

The screenshots:





And thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread.

I personally use the grub4dos method after creating a custom ISO with a driver folder added for just about every windows 7 install to older machines and custom builds.. It has saved me hundreds of hours in the past few months, and the process has gotten much quicker as I go.. and all it cost me was $52 for the retail version of poweriso and an 8GB flash drive.

Ponmayilal said:

Thanks to Dave76 for his valuable inputs, I completed my trials with Multiboot pendrive today.

I used Multiboot ISOs-USB-Creator 2.1.3.5 from here . The advantage is that the menu includes Boot First Hard Drive (HDD), Restart and Shutdown options apart from the Custom Multiboot entries.

The screenshots:

View attachment 105497

View attachment 105498

And thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread.

Click to expand...

Your welcome.

That is a great program for memory sticks.
Really like the Boot First Hard Drive (HDD), Restart and Shutdown options, will add them to mine.

Thanks

Bless you both, Ponmayilal and Dave76!! I have been looking for easy solutions for both bootable Pendrives and ISO's from HDD for a long time. In particular I want extremely flexible options for adding bootable ISO's to both places without a lot of command line annoyance.

As for booting ISO's without burning them to CD or even writing to USB, this is extremely handy and I don't know why everyone is not talking about it. With this option you basically have limitless OS options without having to install anything, and without extra partitions! I can simply treat any bootable ISO as another OS. (Great for defragmenting or virus scanning... and especially for telling Win7 who's boss.)

Having an easily customizable boot menu for the huge USB sticks that are available now (including your phone's micro SD card!) is a God-send. So tired of needing to reformat my USB drive for every new set of tools. Why can't I have them all in one, portable place? Now I can!

Thank you both very much. I'll report back what works best.

Your welcome, glad you found the information useful.

It is a very useful way to use ISO's. Took some searching and trials to find a couple of easy to use options.

Hopefully some easier ones will be found soon

Glad that you found the answers to all your queries here in this thread and thanks for your appreciation.

This thread meandered through various stages before culminating in the multiboot ISO pendrive with inputs and comments from many heads here.

First, it was booting from ISOs stored in the HDD using EasyBCD.

Bill2 then provoked me for good ...*chuckles*

Bill2 said:

This is old stuff.... But then again, theres comfort in cd/dvd because if the boot manager is corrupted etc., this method wont work.

Click to expand...

It then went on to writing a bootable ISO into a pendrive using UltraISO.

Out came the comment that there are only cases that can hold a maximum of six pendrives. (hmmm... each bootable ISO will require a pendrive)

Then came the multiboot ISO pendrive that can boot from as many ISOs as you can put or fit into the pendrive. The "breakthrough" here came from Dave76. I wonder whether even Dave76 knows what it was. Here it is.

Dave76 said:

...... You can add ISO files, edit the menu so they are listed......

Click to expand...

Yes, though I had this program on my comp for over six months, the noob I was or still am, I had assumed that it will work only with the ISOs listed by the software author.*chuckles again*

That one line and a great leap for me. ( I thankfully remember Neil Armstrong. )

So then, here you have all that you need ( a three-in-one) as per your convenience and need, to boot from ISOs without writing them to any optical media.