Jump to content











Photo
* * * * * 4 votes

Index of USB Boot Making Applications


  • Please log in to reply
4 replies to this topic

#1 maanu

maanu

    Gold Member

  • Advanced user
  • 1134 posts
  •  
    Pakistan

Posted 20 October 2009 - 11:55 AM

Following is a brief list of different applications which can make your usb device bootable.

1. Fbinst by Bean
2. Fuwi's Usb Boot Utility
3. Make_USB by Wimb
4. BootIce by Pauly
5. RMPrepUSB
6. Disk Genius
7. UBUSB



I am just giving the little introduction and link to the main topic of that application here on boot-land or to its respective page elsewhere .

1.fbinst ( My Personal Favourite )

Author: Bean123 (China).
He is also in the devlopment team of Grub4dos, it is basically a command line tool and is very easy to use.
You can use as it is from command line or through it's GUI.
You can also use my automated fbinst's package which i made for ease of usage so that i wont have to write all those commands again and again myself.

fbinst on bootland forums:
http://www.boot-land...?showtopic=7932

http://www.boot-land...iew=getlastpost


fbinst on znpc forums (Chinese).
http://bbs.znpc.net/.....;extra=page=1


latest available download:
fbinst (15.11.09)

http://bbs.znpc.net/...nt.php?aid=3806

grldr (14.11.09)

http://bbs.znpc.net/...nt.php?aid=3745




fbinst's 1.5 GUI: ( 16.11.09)

http://bbs.znpc.net/...nt.php?aid=3651 part 1

http://bbs.znpc.net/...nt.php?aid=3744 part 2





WARNING: There were some reports about (false) positives from antivirus software, check the files here:
http://www.virustotal.com/
if in doubt.

my fbinst's cmdline automated package:

http://www.boot-land...iew=getlastpost

which includes latest grldr as of 15.5.2010 .


known Limitations :

it works only on xp , 2k , 2k3 machines ( 32 bit tested) .
If you are running any other OS , boot into PE and use it from there.

2. Fuwi's Bootable USB-Drive Utility

Author: Fuwi (Switzerland).
The package basically uses HP USB format tool, but Fuwi added fixes to remove known glitches in it, to make the usb bootable on as many machines as possible.
It also has an option for making a kicker image out of your (Bart) PE folder.
It uses grub4dos as main loader.

Fuwi's Bootable USB-Drive Utility :
http://www.911cd.net...showtopic=21702

Known Limitations :
None as of now to my knowledge

3. Make_USB.exe

Author: Wimb (Netherlands).
It is a small tool from wimb's AIO utilities that takes care of installing xp from usb.
It has the option of making a multi partitioned usb device without the need of installing any additional driver by yourself.
It also removes some glitches in making usb bootable and working on most machines.

Make_USB.exe:
http://www.boot-land...?showtopic=5306

Direct download link:
http://wimb.winbuild...ad=U_XP_SET.exe

Known Limitations :
None as of now to my knowledge

4. RMPrepUSB :
Author: steve6375 (United Kingdom).
It is a small tool to ONLY partition/format a USB device.
It has options to set as bootloader either:
NTLDR (NT/2K/XP/2003)
BOOTMGR (Vista/2008/Windows 7)
IO.SYS (DOS)
KERNEL.SYS (FreeDOS)
It also has the ability to remove some known limitations in usb booting just like in wimb's tool above, and allows for some "peculiar" formatting/partitioning, USB-ZIP like, 64/32 geometry, etc.

RMPrepUSB:
http://www.boot-land...?showtopic=7739

(download link inside the topic's 1st post).

5.BOOTICE :

Author: Pauly (China).
Current version is 0.78 - English
It is a small utility that besides having the ability of partitioning/formatting a USB device it has also options to change the bootloader invoked, thus, it can be useful also as a complement to other partitioning/formatting utilities.



BOOTICE:
http://www.boot-land...?showtopic=8986

Version 0.78 can be found in the one of the last posts of the topic above


6.Disk Genius :

Author: Dahai Lee (China).
The Active production is being lead by DGen (China) now which was the co programmer of Disk Genius . As of this
date only version 3.0 Beta 12 is available in English . I am giving the link to UNTOUCHED copy which i downloaded a while back
from their Home page (Now Lost) . It is clearly mentioned that for non-commercial purposes this tool can be used .


http://www.boot-land...?showtopic=9459



7.UBUSB :

Author: Pcuser (Kneebrasskee).

This is a new utility that puts BartPE/UBCD4Win on your USB drive and can also make a small 40MB iso image used to boot your USB drive on systems that can't boot from USB otherwise.

it supports syslinux , grub4dos .

more details can be found here ,
http://ubcd4win.com/...showtopic=11375

download link
http://www.ezpcfix.n...d4win/UBUSB.exe

edit : it is GRUB.exe in Disk Genius not GRLDR.exe . sorry .
added list of the apps as told by Nuno .
kindly let me know if you know any other application which can format and make a usb bootable .

edit 2: moved pictures to the related topics . added pcuser's UBUSB to the index .

#2 Noer5

Noer5

    Member

  • Members
  • 34 posts
  •  
    Tahiti

Posted 30 March 2014 - 05:14 PM

Great list.

If one has a USB HDD, and makes empty partitions for installs, then are there any of these that will preserve those partitions?

I've used a couple that would see the partitions and allow choice; but then just wipe them all out.

Thanks



#3 Zoso

Zoso

    Silver Member

  • Advanced user
  • 640 posts
  •  
    Isle of Man

Posted 30 March 2014 - 05:43 PM

Great list.
If one has a USB HDD, and makes empty partitions for installs, then are there any of these that will preserve those partitions?
I've used a couple that would see the partitions and allow choice; but then just wipe them all out.
Thanks


hi Noer5,
what type of installs on those empty partitions and what do you mean by "wipe them all out"?

it is possible to have multiple OS booting separately from a single USB drive using grub4dos.

#4 Noer5

Noer5

    Member

  • Members
  • 34 posts
  •  
    Tahiti

Posted 30 March 2014 - 06:18 PM

>>what do you mean by "wipe them all out"?

The app would let you choose a partition on the USB HDD, but then just overwrite those partitions so that the only partition visable on the HDD was the first. You could still use a partition recovery app to get back the partitions, so it was apparently just the MBR that was altered.

 

>>it is possible to have multiple OS booting separately from a single USB drive using grub4dos.

Could one create a small "system" partition at the beginning of the USB drive to put grub4dos on and then use that as a boot manager?



#5 Zoso

Zoso

    Silver Member

  • Advanced user
  • 640 posts
  •  
    Isle of Man

Posted 30 March 2014 - 08:56 PM

Could one create a small "system" partition at the beginning of the USB drive to put grub4dos on and then use that as a boot manager?


yes. grub4dos is essential and a must have for any multiboot scenario in my opinion. there is more than one way to start it. it can be installed to mbr or just copied to the first windows partition and started by the windows boot.ini or bcd.

check the grub4dos subforum here:http://reboot.pro/forum/66-grub4dos/ for more info.




1 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 1 guests, 0 anonymous users