I have no idea how to do this.
I have 7 iso's that I want to be able to easily boot from using a USB Stick and they are:
- Windows 7 Ultimate x86
- Windows 7 Ultimate x64
- Windows 8.1 x64
- Hirens BootCD
- Ultimate BootCD
- Windows XP Professional
- Ubuntu
Basically, I want to be able to boot my USB stick and instead of it just loading a single OS (like it does at the moment) I want a list of options ^ like above that I can choose and it will load that OS/ISO.
Any ideas how this can be achieved?
47 Answers
Try Easy2Boot (Windows & Linux) - it allows you to plonk the .iso files on the USB key and they will be picked up in a menu dynamically generated at boot time.
As a bonus, to test your USB key, it includes QEMU so you give it a whirl without having to reboot!
I had an issue with their download server, but they have a Google driver mirror listed too.
This requires another tool as a prerequisite:
I found your question when I wanted to do pretty much the same thing myself... I hope this helps!
4Making from Windows
I have had great success using YUMI, it's nice and easy and it supports custom ISOs (keep it updated for newest distros though).
You can also try SARDU and XBOOT.
Easy2Boot works on both Windows and Linux. I haven't tried it though.
Making from Linux
I've tried many, unfortunately most are not as stable and nice as YUMI.
MultiSystem works alright (although sometimes it's buggy), with MultiSystem having a lot more functionality and customization (including persistent data partition sizes). It is also made by French people, so you may see some tooltips being French, but you can get by with icons and the mostly localized English interface.
I've also used multibootusb simple, works well but you have to type in the *.iso filename to boot into it (perhaps due to an error/by design?).
I've used UNetbootin (available from Ubuntu Universe repo).
Most of these programs are front-ends to Syslinux. You can also do this manually on Linux:
I have used only one there may be others: or you could do it by hand but is more tedious work.
Buy an isostick isostick from amazon
I bought one and you put a micro sd or SHXC card in it up to 64gb and it give you a boot menu on every other boot up. Is it perfect no, but it works well enough. The author is working on a patch to fix UEFI bios machines.
Visit isostick
for more details
it is better than what your trying to do I have tried multi-boot loaded a most don't work with one or another ISO. Some like linux, but will hate your windows and vice versa.
I will never go back to doing it the old software way.
4There are many tools available to do that, check it and pick right one for you
- MultiBootUSB
- XBOOT
- YUMI – Multiboot USB Creator
- RMPrepUSB
First copy all ISO files to another USB stick or external drive. Sequentially write each windows ISO to the flash drive using rufus and install it on a separate partition. Finally, use universal USB installer to create a bootable Ubuntu iso and install. After the install, each operating systems will be available in the grub bootloader.
Have you ever consider a PXE server instead? i.e. you can get your boot menu up and running in very short time with Serva. (I'm related to Serva development).
