how to put an ISO on a USB memory stick?

[tomos]

or any image file really. i've used acronis true image to make an iso thats bootable for recovery but want to put the image onto a gig usb memory stick i have.

anyone know how to do this?

same thing as well with any bootable media - floppy or cd/dvd. is there a way to copy the whole thing including boot sectors etc to another device?

[simonbenn]

It's not simple. I wanted to do this with a raw HD partition, but could'nt get it to work.

If I understand you then you want to take a bootable ISO and put it onto a FAT partion on the USB. You then need a way to load a simple OS that will let you bootstrap the ISO and start whatever install process. This needs to effectively wipe out the simple os you booted off while being able to read the FAT disk, which I think is impossible.

The best approach is to extract the iso onto the usb and then somehow make it bootable. For linux I think you need to use syslinux to do this. The debian guys may be able to help.

Simon

Edit: here is the debian way: http://d-i.pascal.at/ google is your friend....

[tomos]

what i was thinking off ideally, is to put a cd image thats bootable onto a flash drive since i dont trust my dvd-rom sometimes. i have a DFI bios cd iso and wanted to see if that would work on a flash drive :(

will check out that link tho - prob with linux is that its very user unfriendly

[simonbenn]

Hi,

reading up about it and knoppix the live cd linux distro can be booted off an ntfs partition with and iso with some hacking. The key words you need to look for are grub4dos and grub4all. I beleive there may be another bootmanager that can do stuff like this, but is closed source freeware. It's name ecapes me however sorry.

I've yet to see a way that ANY bootable iso can be started. The problem lies in 1 being able to handle the underlying filesystem and 2 being able to find the start point/bootloader inside the iso.

Please let me know what you find.

Regards

Simon

Simon

[tomos]

i'll give it a shot. if i somehow managed to trip across how to get this working i'll be sure to post back :)

[tomos]

a little O/T but how fast are these usb sticks now? i just did a test with HDtach on mine and the write shows as 11MB/sec and the read was 97.5MB/sec! :eek:

that read is faster than my bloody 74gig raptor! :thinking:

[tomos]

update, before trying anything else, i tried acronis. i managed to make the usb flash thingy dos bootable (which works - yay - but only plain dos), then used acronis recovery manager to make a recovery disk. instead of making an iso, it let me choose to put the image onto the flash drive and that works too! :clap:

only have to sort out my bootable cd now :)

[tomos]

not having any luck with this tho thought about doing it another way. the flash drive is bootable so can get into a dos prompt.

is there any way to run IMG files from here? the DFI bios cd has a load of options i like, such as running memtest as well as disk manufacturers recovery software etc.

each of these programs are within an IMG file. i cant find any way to run one of these but it has to be possible since the CD does this (cant find any exe to do this).

if i cant do this, is there anyway to extract the contents of the IMG file to a folder?

[simonbenn]

I'm not sure what an IMG file is exactly. It may be the nero iso format. I'll bet that you should be able to extract the contents of the CD onto a USB using ultraiso or something similar.

Regards

Simon