Pen drives & ISOs

Craig321 · 15 Jun 2009 at 00:36

Hi,

Just wondered if there's any decent program that will allow me to 'burn' ISOs (and other image files if possible) to pen drive?

I haven't found any decent guide that will allow me to put an ISO onto a pen drive to install e.g. XP/Vista, or use tools such as Memtest86.

Thanks
Craig.

MagicBoy · 15 Jun 2009 at 00:43

I don't think it can be done as the base formats are different. Pendrives use FAT/NTFS like a hard drive, optical media is on ISO9660 etc.

Very much depends on the application - there is no standard way. I have a bootable pendrive with a bunch of DOS utils on it such as Ghost and Memtest. It's also possible to create a Windows 7 install pendrive.

ricky1981 · 15 Jun 2009 at 04:20

use winrar or 7zip or another tool to extract the iso contents on to the pen drive, you might also need to make the drive bootable. If you do a google search for windows 7 usb install you should find plenty of tutorials

edit: here's one http://www.maximumpc.com/article/howtos/how_to_install_windows_7_beta_a_usb_key

lokkers · 15 Jun 2009 at 06:41

I don't bother extracting the ISOs, I just mount them using virtual drive and copy the contents.

eXor · 15 Jun 2009 at 09:25

There are different ways to do it.

My favourite Swiss army knife, dd, can do it directly.

You can also just copy the files and then copy a boot sector. Works with the Vista / 7 installers.

Craig321 · 15 Jun 2009 at 18:03

Thanks for all the suggestions so far

I tried the instructions given in the link ricky1981 posted, however that seems to be Windows 7 specific, it seems it doesn't support other ISOs?

Just trying dd if=filename.iso of=/dev/sdb1 at the moment under CentOS, hopefully it works.

[Edit]
Just finished running the above command in CentOS. I'm getting "Missing operating system" when I boot from the pen drive though

eXor · 15 Jun 2009 at 18:51

Craig321 said:
Just finished running the above command in CentOS. I'm getting "Missing operating system" when I boot from the pen drive though

You need a Vista or Windows 7 boot sector.

I booted my Vista DVD and used bootsect.exe

Maybe there is a way to format the USB within Windows, such that it is automatically bootable?

Craig321 · 15 Jun 2009 at 18:54

eXor said:
You need a Vista or Windows 7 boot sector.

I booted my Vista DVD and used bootsect.exe

Maybe there is a way to format the USB within Windows, such that it is automatically bootable?

Ah, I assumed dd copied the boot sector etc. as well.

I guess there's no easy way to 'burn' ISOs to pen drive yet then.

eXor · 15 Jun 2009 at 18:59

Craig321 said:
Ah, I assumed dd copied the boot sector etc. as well.

You copied to sdb1. The MBR is on sdb, not sdb1. So that needs some boot code, too.

It's BIOS--->Master Boot Record--->Partition Boot Record

Don't forget to toggle sdb1's bootable flag.