Multiboot flash drive everything. We create a multiboot flash drive with several operating systems and utilities. What to do with a flash drive made in WinToHDD

If you want to create an external drive that can install one of several operating systems, you first need to read the instructions on how to create a bootable USB flash drive in multiboot usb.

MultiBoot USB is a universal, popular utility for creating multiboot removable media. The application is distributed free of charge.

Interface: English.

Creating a flash drive in multiboot usb allows you to avoid some restrictions - the user can load two identical versions of the OS onto one external drive at once.

They should only have different assemblies. Also, the number of recorded images is unlimited.

It all depends on the memory capacity of your flash drive.

The initial stage is preparing devices and programs before installation

First of all, you need to think in advance how many images you want to install on one external storage medium.

Based on this information, calculate the approximate location and take a flash drive that will have enough memory.

Download and install the multiboot usb utility on your computer using the link provided at the beginning of the article.

Despite the fact that the program only has an English-language interface, there are detailed instructions for using it in Russian.

Familiarize yourself with the program's basic functions and toolbar elements before you begin. This will help you avoid common mistakes.

The multiboot usb utility image includes a number of programs that must be installed on bootable external media:

FreeDOS command line boot utility;
Program for working with NTFS partitions;
You also need to confirm the installation of the password editor and operating system registry;
A program for installing previously deleted files and applications;
QuickTech Pro - a utility that allows you to quickly test the performance of the hardware components of a personal computer or laptop;
A number of programs for testing RAM and the quality of PC service;
A program for checking the health of hard drives and working with their partitions.

Important! Do not delete the contents of the flash drive after the initial stage of its creation; all of the above utilities are necessary for further installation of the operating system on your PC. Removing or damaging at least one component can lead to the failure of a multiboot flash drive of a software nature.

The main stage is creating bootable removable media

In the initial window of the utility, the user has access to a list of utilities that are necessary to create a bootable USB flash drive. Follow the instructions to prepare the external media:

Enable the first utility in the list (Figure 1). It is designed to format removable media. Check the QuickFormat box to speed up the process. It is best to format it for the NTFS file system.
Thanks to it, you will not have any problems installing images whose volume exceeds 4 Gigabytes;

No. 2. Installing the HP Usb Disk Storage Format Tool

Now return to the start menu (Figure 1) and run the grub4dos program. During installation, you must specify the disk name - select the path to it. The name will not be reflected, you will only see the amount of free space on the selected hard drive.
Now click on the utility installation key;

No. 3. Grub4dos utility configuration

No. 4. Successful unpacking of the package

After installation, a new program window will appear in which the user must specify the path to the flash drive and click on the Eject button. This way you will unpack all the necessary applications that are needed for the correct operation of the media.

No. 5. Appearance of the main application window

To begin the basic stage of creating a bootable USB flash drive, follow the instructions:

Connect the flash drive to the computer and wait for it to be recognized by the system
Now run the MultiBoot USB program;
In the main program window, select the path to the connected flash drive in the Step 1 field;
In the Step 2 field, select all components. They will also be installed on the bootable media;
Click on the Create button to create a multiboot flash drive.

After completing all the steps above in the instructions, the flash drive will be created, however, it will not contain a single installation image of the operating system.

Adding new operating system images

To complete the process of creating a multiboot flash drive, you need to supplement it with images of the operating systems the user needs.

All images must be exclusively in ISO format.

To make it more convenient for you to navigate between files on a flash drive, create a special folder where you will move all OS images.

This way you won’t confuse them with previously unpacked utilities.

For OS Windows

To install an OS Windows image (of any version and build) on a created flash drive, first create a virtual drive using a program or any other similar utility.

Now go to the My Computer window and find the mounted disk image there. Open its contents. An example of the content is shown in the figure below:

No. 6. Example of the contents of the directory of a mounted operating system image

Now go to the utility window (Figure 1):

No. 7. Windows OS image recording window

In the above window, select the path to the virtual image drive. Then check the box for the OS version that matches the mounted image. And now press the GO key.

Go to the folder with the image. Its contents will change, as, for example, in the figure below:

No. 8. Contents of the folder with the OS image after using the WinsetupFromUsb utility

To add another Windows OS to a flash drive, do the same steps, just don’t forget to check the box next to the OS version corresponding to the image (as in Figure 7).

For Linux OS

For Linux operating systems, follow these steps:

find the file menu.lst on the flash drive and open it using a standard notepad or the Notepad utility;
In the first line write down the name of the operating system, in the second line - the path to the image. Save the final file. The file system may freeze for 15-20 minutes. Wait until its operation returns to normal and the image is written to the flash drive.
An example notepad file content should look like this:

No. 9. Example of adding a new Linux OS image

Thus, you can add any number of images of different operating systems until the flash drive runs out of free space.

Try not to take up all the memory on the media, then the computer will recognize it faster and load image files.

Advice! You should not start installing the OS immediately after adding all the images. Make sure the device is working properly. To do this, run the WinSetupFromUSB utility and select the created multiboot flash drive as the device. Check the TestinQEMU box and click OK. The process of testing the performance of the flash drive will start.

Thematic videos:

How to create a multiboot flash drive

How to create a multiboot flash drive with MultiBoot USB

MultiBoot USB - Creating a multiboot flash drive

How to create a bootable USB flash drive. The process is shown without installing OS installation files onto a USB flash drive.

Many people know what a boot disk is - it is a CD or DVD from which you can start installing an operating system or some useful software. Fewer people know that flash drives can be used in exactly the same way as disks. This loading method only works on more or less modern motherboards. Even fewer people are aware of the existence of multiboot flash drives.

What is a multiboot flash drive? In my understanding, this is a device from which you can run more than one software product or disk image. To put it simply, on one flash drive you can store utilities for working with the file system, various distributions of operating systems, software for creating and restoring media images, antiviruses, anti-SMS and much more. Definitely, having one flash drive with all the necessary software is more convenient and efficient than carrying around 5-10 of them, wouldn’t you agree?

Since I had another glitch with my PC over the weekend (successfully resolved using EasyBCD), which I had never encountered before, I had to turn my attention, willy-nilly, to software that creates bootable flash drives, because I didn’t have one at hand. Quite by accident, I discovered that after creation the flash drive turned out to be not just any kind, but multiboot. I used the pleasant YUMI software ( Y our U universal M ultiboot I nstaller), this is the program we will talk about now.

Download the YUMI software from the link from the developers’ website. At the time of writing, the latest version is 0.0.9.6. The program does not require installation and consists of one file, by running it and clicking “I Agree” in the main window, the user will see its interface:

First of all, you need to insert an empty (this is not necessary, but recommended) flash drive formatted in the FAT32 or NTFS file system (I personally didn’t succeed with exFAT). For me this is drive N, and select it in the upper left corner of the program window.

Softina offers a long list of different OS (and software) for downloading and installation, but we are not interested in all this, so we scroll down the list and select the menu item “Try an Unlisted ISO” (which translates as “try an ISO that is not in the list” ) and select the desired ISO file, it must be a boot disk image, for example Hiren's Boot CD.

After choosing an image (it is important to know that there should be no spaces in its name), in the main program window we click “Create”.

In this dialog box we click “Yes”, thereby confirming the creation of a bootable USB flash drive.

The screenshot above shows the process of creating a bootable USB flash drive, part of which is described in green text (left), and part of which looks like a normal copy of an ISO file (right), which is what it is.

After completing the operation, click “Next”.

We are asked - do we want to add more ISO files or distributions to N:\? For now we click “No”, because we need to check whether our bootable flash drive works before making it multiboot.

Click Finish, closing YUMI there.

The next step is to check the functionality of our flash drive. You can check it in the usual way - restart the PC and boot from a flash drive, or you can do it in a more advanced way, using the program MobaLiveUSB, based on QEMU. Download the software from the link and throw it into the root directory of the newly created flash drive.

After starting the program and clicking “Oui” in it, the menu of our flash drive should appear:

The first item in the list means returning to booting from the drive, and the second means going to the menu with disk images. Let's go to the second point.

There we see the following:

If you select the Boot Hirens_BootCD.ISO item and press Enter, the Hiren's Boot CD image will boot.

QEMU, of course, will not replace full testing of recorded images, but it can show something:

Loaded Mini Windows XP from a USB flash drive

Well, the flash drive works, you can load a recorded ISO file from it, but it would be nice to make it multi-boot. To do this, close QEMU, restart YUMI and add the ISO using the method described above (via the menu item "Try an Unlisted ISO"), I decided to choose the good old 98th Windows:

We select an image (I have prepared several for the material, and you should have your own), click open, after which the process of adding the image to the menu of our flash drive begins, plus copying the ISO file to it:

YUMI allows you to add as many image files as you like at any time without formatting the flash drive; all ISO files will automatically appear in the menu.

By launching MobaLiveUSB again and selecting the bottom menu in the main menu, we already see that in addition to Hiren's Boot CD, an image file with Windows 98 SE is available:

It would seem that that’s all, we can easily create a multiboot flash drive for all occasions, the volume of software on which is limited only by the user’s imagination and the number of free gigabytes.

But no, we don’t want a faceless flash drive with a good-natured-looking penguin on a black background, and the English language in the menu can confuse those people who don’t know it. This means we need to personalize the flash drive, i.e. visually adjust it to your needs.

First, let's deal with the Russian language in the main menu, to do this we go to our flash drive, in the multiboot folder we find the file syslinux.cfg, open it with a text editor and write the following line there (underlined in red):

So I pointed to the font file that will be used by the main menu of the flash drive. We put it in the multiboot folder. After adding the required line to syslinux.cfg, we need to save the file with the correct encoding - 866 (OEM - Russian), this can be done using any decent text editor, for example, which I have instead of Notepad. Now the flash drive menu can be translated into Russian and the latter will be displayed correctly (and not in clunkers).

After this, we need to change the background image of the main menu; to do this, in the syslinux.cfg file in the menu background line we write our own image (or replace yumi.png with our own with the same name), not forgetting to put it in the same folder (multiboot). The image must have a resolution of 640x480 and be in PNG format. In general, you can tinker a lot in the syslinux.cfg file, customizing many of the boot menu parameters to suit your needs. After a short ordeal, I got the following result:

Yes, I couldn’t do without mentioning this site. This type of start menu suits me quite well; let’s go to the menu, which contains a list of ISO files.

Initially the menu looks like this:

By manipulating the menu.lst file (located at \multiboot\menu) I achieved the following result:

I changed the background (specified my BMP file in splashimage, changed the display names of ISO files (changed the title value, it is also used to replace the title of the entire menu) and I don’t remember how I changed the color of the frame around the menu to blue and the font to gray.

I hope that this short material was useful to you, dear readers. There is a lot of room for experimentation, because the capabilities of syslinux.cfg are wide, I have considered only a part of them, the most necessary ones. Personally, it’s convenient for me for the OS and other images to be shown in one list, but someone will want to make their own menu for each type of boot disk (OS in one list, antiviruses in another, software for working with images in a third, and so on), in which you can go through the main thing.

p.s. I also advise you to pay attention to the XBoot utility, with the help of which creating a multiboot flash drive is in some ways even easier.

» How to create a multiboot flash drive with Windows XP and programs?

How to create a multiboot flash drive with Windows XP and programs?

What is a multiboot flash drive used for?

A multiboot flash drive is a tool that any experienced user would want to have on hand. It can help out in situations where, for example, the computer does not boot from the hard drive, and you need to access data, when you need to install an operating system on a computer without a CDDVD drive, and also to run some service and diagnostic utilities. A multiboot flash drive can be used as a carrier for several distributions of operating systems, for example Windows XP, Windows 7, Linux, etc. From it you can load various LiveCDs - “live disks” with systems that do not require installation, work with programs that serve computer devices, conduct anti-virus scans and much more. In a word, it is an extremely necessary and useful thing.

On the Internet you can find many ready-made assemblies for creating multiboot media, but it is best to learn how to make them yourself. Then your flash drive will contain the set of software that you choose yourself. The programs may be different (naturally, in bootable image format), but it is very advisable, among other things, to keep at least one Windows distribution on a flash drive. We will consider the option with Windows XP.

Preparation

Before you start creating a multiboot flash drive, you need to prepare the following:

flash drive, with a capacity of 2 GB or more - if you are going to place only the Windows XP distribution and programs on it, and if you want it to have several operating systems, take a larger volume - from 4 GB;
software that you will place on the flash drive: Windows XP distribution in the form of an ISO image or on a DVD and everything else in ISO, IMA, IMG formats, etc.;
a computer running OS Windows, where all work will be carried out;
utilities and files for working with a flash drive: CDDVD drive emulator (UltraISO, Daemon Tools, etc.), WinSetupFromUSB - a free tool for transferring Windows XP to a USB drive and a bootloader installer, the bootloader itself - grldr and the configuration file menu.lst ( You can use Notepad to create an empty text file with the extension lst).

Making a flash drive multiboot

Formatting

First of all, the future multiboot flash drive must be formatted in NTFS or FAT32. The option with NTFS is preferable - loading will be faster. For these purposes, you can use different tools, including those built into Windows, but we will use WinSetupFromUSB.

Attention! Before you start formatting, make sure that there is nothing valuable on the media, as all files on it will be deleted.

Run WinSetupFromUSB and click the “BootICE” button to launch the utility of the same name.

Click on the “Parts Manage” button to create an active boot partition on the flash drive.

In the next window you will see a list of sections. In our example, there is only one section. To make it active (the active section is marked with the letter “A” in the Act column), click the “Activate” button.
To start the formatting process, click on the “”ReFormat USB disc” button, then “Next” and “OK”, without changing anything in the settings. Mark the drive type as “USB-HDD”.

After these steps, the flash drive will be clean and prepared for further work.

Creating a boot sector and copying boot files

We continue to work in BootICE. Our next task is to create a boot sector on the USB drive and copy the files needed for booting to it. These are, as stated, grldr and menu.lst.

While in the main BootICE window, click on the “Process MBR” button.

After this, the “Master Boot Record” window will open, where you need to check the box next to “Grub4DOS” - bootloader type, and then click “Install / Config”. There is no need to change anything in the next configuration settings window, just click “Save to Disc” and close it.

Close BootICE, copy the grldr and menu.lst files to the root directory of the flash drive and proceed to the next step.

Transferring Windows XP distribution and programs to a USB flash drive

Prepare a Windows XP distribution on disk or as an ISO file. Install the disc into the CDDVD drive, and mount the image into a virtual drive, which will be created by an emulator program, for example, UltraISO.

Run WinSetupFromUSB. In the “Add to USB disc” section of the window, check the box next to “Windows 2000/XP2003 Setup”. A small button on the right will open Explorer so you can specify the path to the Windows XP distribution disk. Next, click on the “GO” button, and the process of copying files will begin. In a similar way, distributions of other operating systems are transferred to a flash drive.

Copy boot images of other programs that your multiboot flash drive will contain to a separate folder. Place it in the root of the drive and give it a clear name using Latin letters. In our example, the folder will be called PROG. We will take as an example MHDD, a utility for working with hard drives, and Memtest86+, a diagnostic tool for computer RAM. Images of these programs can be downloaded for free from their official websites.

Configuring the Multiboot Menu

Now the most difficult and interesting part: we have to configure the boot menu. We hope you can imagine what it is. This is what you will see after the computer boots from your flash drive. Since it is multi-boot, it should have a list of contents, or rather a menu, with the help of which you could launch the necessary programs. This list is contained in the menu.lst file.

Grub4DOS menu.lst is already included in the installation package. You can use it as a basis for creating your own menu, but you can also clear it of its contents and fill it out yourself. In our case, there is no task of studying the syntax of Grub4DOS commands in detail, so we will clear the file (or create it ourselves) and insert into it the ready-made code fragments necessary for the menu to work.

I must say that the possibilities for customizing the multiboot menu are quite large. You can add a picture as a background, you can use different fonts, enable support for the Russian language, etc. But in order to solve the problem, we will limit ourselves to simple and understandable things.

So, let the first point be to install Windows XP on your computer. Next, let’s say, install Windows 7 or 8, then launch MHDD, followed by Memtest86+. The last points will be to boot from the hard drive (start Windows), reboot (reboot) and shutdown the computer (shutdown). Our menu will look like this:

Install Microsoft Windows XP

Install Microsoft Windows 7/8

Installing Windows XP

Copy the following code to the top of the document:

title Install Microsoft Windows XP
root(hd0,0)
map –mem /WINSETUP/XPpSP3.ISO (0xff)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
map –hook
root (0xff)
chainloader /I386/SETUPLDR.BIN

Line title contains text that will be displayed as a menu item. It must be written in Latin characters (there is no support for Cyrillic fonts in Grub4DOS by default).
In line root The disk partition must be specified where the bootloader should look for the required file. (hd0.0) in this case it is a flash drive.
map –mem /WINSETUP/XPpSP3.ISO (0xff)– this entry points to the path to the file that will be launched. In our case, this is XPpSP3.ISO in the WINSETUP folder, which is located in the root of the flash drive.
Team chainloader executes a call to the Windows XP loader – SETUPLDR.BIN. There is no need to change its parameters.

Of all the above, the user can only change the value of title and map –mem. Everything else should remain as is.

Installing Windows 7 or 8

Indent one line from the previous part of the code and insert the following fragment:

title Install Microsoft Windows 7/8
map –unmap=0:0xff
map –unhook
root(hd0,0)
chainloader/bootmgr

Since the Windows 7 and 8 boot loader is copied to the root of the flash drive, you do not need to specify the path to it. Apart from the title value, everything should remain as is.

Running MHDD and Memtest86+

Below, insert the following code in a line:

title MHDD
find –set-root /PROG/MHDD.IMA
map –mem /PROG/MHDD.IMA (fd0)
map –hook
rootnoverify(fd0)
chainloader(fd0)+1

title Memtest86+
map /PROG/memtest86+.iso (0xFF) || map –mem /IMG/memtest86+.iso (0xFF)
map –hook
chainloader (0xFF)

The command syntax is different, since the boot files of these programs have different formats in our example (IMA and ISO). Here it is important to correctly specify the path to the files on the flash drive: /PROG/MHDD.IMA and /PROG/memtest86+.iso, as well as enter the title.

Booting Windows from your hard drive

The following code fragment will be responsible for it:

title Start Windows
find –set-root –ignore-floppies –ignore-cd /bootmgr || find –set-root –ignore-floppies –ignore-cd /ntldr
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
map –hook
rootoverify (hd0)
chainloader(hd0)+1

The computer's hard drives will be searched for the Windows XP bootloader - ntldr or Windows 7/8 - bootmgr.

Reboot and shutdown

The last two fragments, the first of which is responsible for rebooting, and the second for turning off the computer.

title Reboot
reboot

title Shutdown
halt

After that, save the menu.lst file and close it.

Testing

To check how our multiboot flash drive works, run WinSetupFromUSB again. In the main window, find the “Test in QEMU” item and check it. The QEMU virtual machine will launch, where you can see the boot menu you just created.

If everything is displayed the same as you see in the picture, and each of the points works as expected, your flash drive is ready.

And Misha Rytsarev adds: the same bugs have been appearing in this program for a long time. Firstly, could this depend on what OS you are running this thing under? (I have "18.04.2"). For example, the bugs I have are that the button to check for updates does not work, even if there are any (and I’ve updated it manually many times already, I haven’t noticed any difference, its shortcomings are still not eliminated. Then I take its update packages from here - http://liveusb.info/multisystem/depot/dists/all/main/binary-amd64/m/ and install them manually - installed (and where can you read what bugfixes and other changes (their history) were? ))
And there is another strange bug - often when I try to add an OS to such a multiboot flash drive, I get the message “Error: the selected ISO image has an unsupported symbol in the name: (3 space) /home/username/Downloads /tails-amd64-3.15.iso" and further below - "Waiting, press ENTER." I click and the program goes into its normal mode. And if, being in it, you try to repeat this operation, then the same thing will happen again. And if you move the required ISO to some other folder (preferably in “Downloads”), sometimes this gets rid of that bug and everything works out. If this does not help, then you have to pervert - insert another flash drive or memory card into the computer and copy this ISO there first and then try to install it using this program into a multiboot flash drive from there - this often helps. And what are these problems?
And one more problem - every time it starts, this program again requires installing the “GRUB-2” bootloader, even if it was previously installed on that flash drive (and why doesn’t it recognize that if it’s not needed there? There really is a button ( uncheck) to disable this function, but for some reason it doesn’t work for me). How can I send my bug reports to the manufacturer? (And is it possible to find an employee there who would remotely (using software like “Anydesk”), hot on his heels, would “tinker” with this program there? (And they haven’t received such complaints before? Do they know about these problems? ))

And well, since this thing is so buggy in life, then what about such a flash drive, what needs to be changed there - do it manually? Those. if it already has one or several different OSes, then how can you manually add another one? (Or if you deleted any of the ISO images available there, then what needs to be edited so that its presence in the menu is not displayed later?) That is. If the user simply copied another ISO there manually, what then needs to be manually changed in the configuration files there so that the new ISO appears in the boot menu and can be launched from it? (And will this program itself be able to do this automatically, if the required ISO has already been manually “uploaded” by the user to such a flash drive? (And how to make changes to everything that is there, even from Windows? (And will this program work normally, if it works in an OS running in a virtual machine?)))

And one more question - how to unmount such a flash drive when any OS is running from it? (This may be necessary in order to write any data to it. After all, everything is written to it differently than to “single-axis” flash drives (i.e., to those on which only one can be written with a regular ISO image burning program, and even in read-only mode - you can’t write or delete anything there with ordinary file managers (even if there is a lot of unallocated space there)).
And if, when you launch an OS in live mode, it turns out that it has updates, then how can you edit this ISO image so as to add these updates to it? (How can I add additional packages and software?))

And one more question about it - how to rebuild the package of this program so that during installation it does not pull anything from the network? (That is, in 1x all those installation packages (at that link above) do not contain everything and they pull a lot more from the network (mostly related to “Qemu” (why is it there? It’s impossible to do without it) ?) And also “Gtkdialog” packages and some other libraries (this is also due to the fact that the original Ubuntu ISO images are too “mentally incomplete” in this regard - they do not contain many hundreds of all kinds of libraries (and something else) then. Without which quite a lot of software cannot be installed offline (for example, only everything related to KDE and QT5 requires about 700 packages!) Mint and other custom assemblies can get rid of these problems. for example, the Google Chrome browser packages always have a supply of such “brains” for all occasions; in any OS version and with any shortage of such “brains”, this browser does not pull anything from the network (and there are problems with dependencies I didn’t have it, no matter where I put it, I think that this program can also be improved, “taught”, so that it would be so capable and universal (but I’m afraid that without custom craftsmen it won’t work there))) .

There are now more than a billion computers in the world. Each computer runs on a specific OS, be it a system Linux or system Windows. Many system administrators and advanced users are faced with replacing the OS with a large number of computers. Therefore, each system administrator has at hand several disks and bootable flash drives with different operating systems.

In this material we will try to simplify the life of a system administrator or an experienced user. We will describe the installation process multiple OS images on one bootable USB flash drive. That is, after reading the article you will be able to do bootable USB flash drive with different operating systems.

The first way to create a multiboot drive

For the first method we will need two utilities RMPrepUSB And Easy2Boot. You can find them on their official websites www.rmprepusb.com and www.easy2boot.com. Immediately after downloading, install the utility RMPrepUSB. To do this, run the installer.

Now click the main button Install, after which the program will install and immediately notify you about this in the final installation window.

Close the installer window and paste USB drive. Then launch the utility from a shortcut on the Desktop.

Before creating a bootable USB flash drive, we will need ISO system images for example. Window 7, Windows 10 And Windows XP. You can make them from licensed disks using utilities Alcohol 120% or CloneCD. If the iso images are ready, you can immediately begin directly preparing the multiboot drive. To do this, check all the radio buttons as shown in the figure and specify the path to the archive with Easy2Boot.

Having placed all the switches correctly, feel free to press the button Prepare disk. The process of writing the necessary data to the drive should begin.

Now let’s go to the USB drive in the “_ISO\WINDOWS” folder and write iso images of our systems to the appropriate folders:

Windows XP in "_ISO\WINDOWS\XP";
Window 10 in "_ISO\WINDOWS\WIN10";
Window 7 in "_ISO\WINDOWS\WIN7".

After the images are written to USB drive, you need to do the last operation by pressing the key combination Ctrl + F2. In a couple of minutes, your multiboot drive will be ready. You can check its performance in the built-in emulator RMPrepUSB. To launch it, press the F11 key. After pressing the button, the emulator will start loading with your drive and after a few minutes you will see the bootloader menu.

As you can see from the example, this method of creating a multiboot USB drive may seem a little complicated. But if you follow the instructions, then after a few tests of this method it will be very simple for you, like any other. In addition, with its help you can make a boot menu with different pictures. For example, like in the picture below.

You can also find ready-made pictures on the website www.rmprepusb.com.

The second way to create a multiboot drive

For this method we need the utility WinSetupFromUSB. You can download it from the official website www.winsetupfromusb.com. The utility is distributed as a self-extracting archive. Therefore, you just need to download it and unpack it to a place convenient for you. If we compare this method with the previous example, this one will be much simpler and especially suitable for beginners. Before creating, also prepare two OS images of Window 7 and Ubuntu 14. Install the formatted flash drive into your computer and run the utility.

Now select the OS ISO images as shown in the image below.

At this point, all the settings for creating a bootable drive are ready and you can press the GO button, after which the recording of a multiboot USB drive will begin.

If you want the created multi-boot USB flash drive to boot into a virtual machine, then before pressing the GO button, check the “ Test in QEMU».

The example shows that any user can handle this application. But in WinSetupFromUSB There are also options for advanced users. To use them, check the box " Advanced options».

If you want to burn another similar operating system onto the media, for example, Windows 7, then do the same operation with the image Windows 7 in the considered example on the same flash drive. After completing these steps when booting from a drive, you will receive two versions of the system Windows 7.

An example of launching a multiboot flash drive in a laptop

For example, we will use the disk we just created using the utility WinSetupFromUSB and laptop Lenovo IdeaPad Z570. In order for our laptop to see the bootable USB flash drive, we need to boot from it. To do this, before booting the laptop, press the F11 key, which will launch the bootable media selection utility.

Select our media and press Enter. This will launch our drive menu.

For example, let's choose to install Ubuntu 14 and press Enter. The installation process will begin Ubuntu 14.

The seven installation process is similar Ubuntu 14.

As you can see, launching the media on a laptop is quite simple and even a novice user can handle it. The process for starting the drive on other laptops and desktop computers may be slightly different. You can find out how to load the boot media selection menu in the manual that came with your laptop or motherboard.

Summarize

In our material, we looked at the most popular utilities for creating multiboot drives. In addition to the two programs RMPrepUSB and WinSetupFromUSB, there are also such utilities as:

SARDU;
YUMI;
XBoot.

Each of these utilities has both pros and cons. These utilities are not as popular as RMPrepUSB and WinSetupFromUSB, so we did not include them in the review. If you have a desire, you can always familiarize yourself with them, since there are a lot of materials on the Internet with reviews of these programs. Another advantage of these utilities is the ability to install images boot antiviruses or program images backup. Therefore, using a multiboot flash drive, you can always scan your hard drive for viruses and make backup copies before installing the OS.

I would also like to note that we have described only part of the functionality. RMPrepUSB And WinSetupFromUSB. Therefore, if you want to gain advanced skills in the functionality of these utilities, we recommend visiting their official websites. Here you will find all the necessary manuals that will help you create a multiboot flash drive that meets your requirements.

We hope that this article has helped resolve any issues that have arisen.