Many people understand that CDs and DVDs as storage media have a lot of shortcomings. The three most important shortcomings are their poor reliability (this is especially true for CDs: a disk has been lying on a shelf for a year or two, and then it turns out that it has stopped being readable. The reason for this is simple - the working layer peeled off and holes formed that were clearly visible in the light), low speed and the need to change disks in the drive when installing the software.
In a service center setting, the last 2 points are especially relevant.
Therefore, today we will create a multiboot USB drive from which you can install operating systems or boot a Live CD build.
We will need:
1. USB drive (flash drive with a capacity of 8-16 GB or an external HDD of any size);
2. Images of operating system installers and Live CD;
3. WinSetupFromUSB program (you can download the latest version 1.0 beta 8.
If we create bootable USB flash drive, then you can skip the next section.
The hard drive must be prepared in a special way:
zero, that is, first in a row;
- The boot partition must be main;
- The boot partition must be active;
- The boot partition must be formatted as FAT32.
I shared my external HDD 500 GB as follows:
After preparing the disk, you need to unpack the images from which we will assemble the multiboot module.
- For Windows XP, specify the source where the i386 folder is located;
- For Windows 7, specify the source where the BOOT and SOURCES folders are located;
- To build a Live CD, specify the source where the i386 folder is located;
- To add a ready-made boot disk image (for example, DOS, Linux or some other multi boot disk) you must specify the appropriate ISO image. ATTENTION! Downloading from ISO can be large random access memory(depending on the size of the image)!
- For Linux, specify the source where the SYSLINUX folder is located. 
Now that everything is ready, you can start creating a multiboot disk.
ATTENTION!!! BEFORE CREATING A BOOT DISK, YOU NEED TO MAKE SURE THAT THERE IS NO IMPORTANT DATA ON THE MEDIA! OTHERWISE THEY WILL BE IRREVERSIBLY LOST!
Run WinSetupFromUSB... 
First of all, let's create a boot sector using the built-in Bootice utility.
To do this, select the prepared partition and click the Bootice button in the main program window.
The following window will open: 
Next, open Parts Manage: 
If you have performed this procedure before, you can skip reformatting.
Select the desired partition or flash drive and click Reformat USB Disk.
For a flash drive or for hard drive with one partition, select USB-HDD Mode (Single Partition). If the disk is supposed to have 2 or more partitions, select USB-HDD Mode (Multi-Partitions).
Partition Alignment is set to Align To Cylinder.
Click Next.
Set partition sizes and file systems: 
Click OK and agree that the disk will be formatted and the data will be lost.
Formatting is complete.
In the main Bootice window, the Process MBR button becomes available. Let's press it. 
Here we leave everything as it is (GRUB4DOS), click Install/Config.
In the GRUB4DOS settings window, we don’t touch anything, just click Save To Disk: 
The Master Boot Record (MBR) has been created.
Now you need to create boot entry partition (PBR - Partition Boot Record).
In the main Bootice window, click Process PBR.
The boot entry creation window will open: 
Select GRUB4DOS, click Install/Config, then OK (do not change anything).
The partition boot record (PBR - Partition Boot Record) has been created.
Everyone who has encountered the installation at least once operating system Microsoft Windows know what can be created bootable dvd disk or bootable USB flash drive, the latter is often used through a large throughput, which speeded up the installation of Windows.
But how to go further and create a bootable hard drive? And we'll talk about this below.
In fact, it has been possible to create bootable hard drives for a long time; the ability to install from them was available with operating images Windows systems 7, 8 and 10. After it is created and connected to personal computer The installation procedure will look the same as with DVD disc or USB drive.
Let's do this step by step.
First step, this is connecting our hard drive to another computer on which the image we need is recorded and the operating system is already installed. Once connected, it is recommended to format it for proper operation. Microsoft means Windows, the same way as with a regular flash drive. We carry out formatting in file system NTFS.
Step two, after formatting is complete, we will use a small program called BOOTTICE, with which we will create a bootable hard drive (you need to run it as an administrator). In the program, go to the “Physical Disks” tab and select our disk from the drop-down list, then click “Process MBR”.
In the window that opens, we need to select the “GRUB4DOS” option and then click the “Install / Config” button at the bottom.
A window will open in front of us, where we need to successively press two buttons “Read from disk” and “Save to disk”, after completing the operation, click “OK”.
Step three, recording the operating system image to our created bootable hard drive. It is enough to take the desired image of Windows 7, 8 or 10 (.ISO file) and unpack it directly to our disk.
The fourth and final step is to connect our drive to a personal computer. In the BIOS we select to boot from our HDD, where after saving the settings we will begin installing the Microsoft Windows operating system.
Advantage this method is that Windows installs much faster and can be used in the absence DVD drive or flash drives.
Bootable USB Flash or HDD drive is convenient because you can avoid using CD/DVD to install the OS and use diagnostic programs such as Memtest, MHDD, Acronis TI.
A “multi-boot” flash drive or HDD is good because you don’t have to format the entire disk for each program, but install everything there once necessary programs and when loading from it, select the one you need through a beautiful menu. In the case of an HDD, it is convenient to create a separate small partition for this.
There are many solutions for flash drives (for example, http://eee-pc.ru/wiki/soft:usb_multiboot), but, as a rule, they do not work with USB HDD. On Habré I only found information about installing Win7 from a USB HDD, but a year ago attempts to reproduce this were unsuccessful. For Windows installations 7 from a flash drive there is MS Win7 DVD Tool, but again it does not work with HDD. So let's create our own multiboot USB HDD using GRUB4DOS.
We will need:
- USB HDD (everything described should also work for flash drives).
- Windows OS (of course, you can do this similarly from an OS on Linux based, but I don’t currently have the opportunity to check the performance and the presence of “pitfalls”).
- Motherboard (BIOS) capable of booting from USB drives. If booting from USB is not supported, you can use Plop, more on that below.
Let's get started
- Download HP USBFW and format our drive. Usually everyone, including me, skips this step. It may work without it, but personally I tried everything standard options formatting from Windows 7, but booting from my 320GB Toshiba did not work (it froze immediately after selecting Boot menu) before using this utility.
- If you used HP USBFW from the previous point, you can delete the partition it created for the entire disk and create your own, smaller one (preferably FAT32, otherwise problems may arise with some programs and the OS), and leave the remaining space for “file dumping”.
- Install the GRUB4DOS bootloader in the MBR. It is recommended to use the first option so as not to make a mistake when choosing a disk or partition.
- You can use the GUI: to do this, download grubinst-1.1-bin-w32-2008-01-01, run grubinst_gui.exe, select the disk, click Refresh V Part list and select the desired section. The rest of the settings can be left untouched.
- Or in the console with the command: grubinst.exe hd(disk number, partition number) The disk number can be found in Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc).
- Copying files grldr And Menu.lst from the archive grub4dos-0.4.4.zip to the root of the section.
To check the functionality of many programs, it is not necessary to reboot the computer every time. Can be used virtual machines: MobaLiveCD or VirtualBox. For VB, execute in the console: "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage" internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename "C:\USBHDD.VDI" -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 where the number in PhysicalDrive is the number of our boot disk, and indicate the resulting file (C:\USBHDD.VDI) as the hard drive when creating the machine. However, some operating systems (such as Windows 7) may not work this way.
Examples of installing some OS and programs
Memmers86+
Download ISO image from off. site memtest.org/download/4.20/memtest86+-4.20.iso.zip and throw it on our boot HDD (do not forget to unpack the .zip archive).Open Menu.lst text editor, add the following there:
title Memtest find --set-root /mt420.iso map /mt420.iso (hd32) map --hook root (hd32) chainloader ()
And let's try to figure out what these commands mean.
title Memtest - the name of the item (Memtest) that will be displayed in the menu.
map/mt420.iso (hd32) - loading an ISO image located in the root of the boot disk (CD-ROM emulation).
root(hd32) - makes the virtual CD-ROM root.
chainloader() - transfers control to another loader (if nothing is specified in brackets, then the root one is used, in this case hd32).
Ubuntu 10.4
We also drop the ISO image from ubuntu.com onto the HDD and write it in Menu.lst (the image is renamed ubuntu1.iso):
Title Ubuntu map /ubuntu1.iso (hd32) map --hook root (hd32) kernel /casper/vmlinuz iso-scan/filename=/ubuntu1.iso boot=casper quiet splash -- locale=ru_RU initrd /casper/initrd.lz
Windows 7
But with Win 7 it’s a little more complicated.
Method 1:
Copy all files from the Windows 7 disk (image) and add them to Menu.lst:
title Install Windows 7 find --set-root /bootmgr chainloader /bootmgr
In some cases it works, but various errors may occur during installation. In addition, this method will only work if there is only one Windows 7 on the hdd, otherwise (for example, if we want to put x86 and x64 there), the installation of the first one found will start.
Method 2:
UPD: automation of this method: rghost.ru/20467691 or greenflash.su/_fr/7/7487664.7z. The files from the archive (except for menu.lst and seven.iso) must be copied to the root of the section (or the paths in Menu.lst must be changed accordingly).
Possible problems and errors
Error 60: File for drive emulation must be in one contiguous disk area
Solution: You need to defragment the image. For example, using the Contig program from Mark Russinovich. Usage: contig.exe g:\ubuntu1.iso in the console.
BIOS does not support booting from USB, freezes, takes a long time to load and other problems associated with booting from a USB HDD
As if installing an OS is not something complicated, and my opinion is that it is enough to be friends with the computer and have two more hands in addition to your head - one right and the other left. To install the OS on your computer, you need a boot disk or bootable USB flash drive.
But what to do if there is neither one nor the other, it doesn’t work optical drive, or do you have a netbook? After thinking a little, I remembered that I have an external USB pocket for HDD and a free old HDD 2.5\’\’ I also have it. In general, if you have a pocket hard drive, you can make it bootable.
There are utilities for this purpose that can be used to do this, but I decided to use the standard ones using Windows.
There are a lot of descriptions and videos on the Internet, but, unfortunately, there is one problematic point that the authors for some reason omit. Well, okay, I'll start in order.
Before working with the disk, be sure to transfer and save necessary information from this disk to another medium.
I will carry out all the settings standard means Windows 8.1. There may be some differences from Windows previous releases, but if there are, they are not significant.
First of all, I want to note that making an external HDD bootable is much more convenient. I divided the disk into two partitions, one contains the Windows distribution, the other partition is for my needs.
1. We connect the USB pocket and go to Disk management.
Attention! All data on the disk will be destroyed!
If you have Windows 8 installed on your PC, 1 click right click mice: Start/Disk Management;
If Windows is earlier versions, open the Computer Management console: Start / Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Computer Management / expand Storage Devices / left click Disk Management.
See screenshot:
2. Choose external HDD drive. Be extremely careful; if you select another drive by mistake, all information will be destroyed.
In my case, this is Disk 1. As you can see in the screenshot, the disk is divided into two volumes (partitions):
3. Delete disk partitions:
4. Create new disk partitions. One for the distribution, the second will remain for your needs:
Right-click on the free field of the disk, in context menu select a team Create a simple volume:
5. In the Create Wizard window that appears simple volume, press the button Further:
Specify the volume size as 4404 megabytes and click Next. Please note that the size is indicated in megabytes. And since 1 gigabyte is equal to 1024 megabytes, then we get 1024×4.3 = 4403.2 megabytes for the distribution partition (mine weighs 4.18 GB, for example);
In this dialog, you need to format new section(FAT 32), press Further then Ready:
6. After this, you need to make the created partition active (don’t forget, because the computer will boot from this partition), to do this:
Right click the mouse and select the command in the context menu Make the section active.
We respond to the confirmation request YES.
The external HDD looks like this:
7. We format the second partition on the disk in the same order, preferably in NTFS, but do not make it active.
Copying Windows to the active partition of an external HDD
Copy Windows distribution booting an external HDD is quite simple and easy.
From boot DVD:
Open the installation DVD in Explorer, select all folders and files, and copy to the active partition external HDD;
From the ISO image:
By and large, an ISO image is a kind of archive. So you can open it using any archiver. You can also open the ISO image via Total Commander or Daemon Tools. Well, if you have Windows 8 or 8.1 installed on your PC, then open it with Explorer. Select all folders and files and copy them to the active partition of the external HDD;
That's it, your external HDD can act as bootable media. Just reboot and set the boot priority to USB HDD in the BIOS (depending on the BIOS type).
- When you turn on the laptop, press F2 to enter the BIOS;
- Go to the tab Boot;
- IN Boot Priority order install USB HDD;
- Click F10, and then OK.
If that doesn't work, check out this article.
Save the changes and proceed to install Windows.
As we can see from the text, preparing an external HDD for installing Windows is quite simple. And my description will not be complete if I do not talk about one problem that for some reason is rarely written about on the Internet.
Making the hard drive partition active
When I divided the hard drive into two volumes, for some reason unknown to me, not a single partition of the disk could be made active. This function was not available in the context menu.
The active partition is the partition from which the computer boots.
There are two ways to make a section active:
- Using the Computer Management console. We have already considered this method, but, unfortunately, for a number of reasons, the Make Partition Active command may not be available. The solution to this problem is also not difficult. Remember how to prepare a bootable USB flash drive from the Command Line.
- Using the Command Line, through the utility diskpart. The second method is a little more complicated, but more effective. You just need to do all the operations carefully and slowly.
Setting the active partition using the command line
1. Connect an external USB HDD;
2. Click Start/All Programs/Accessories/ Command line . Click right key mouse and select Run as administrator.
3.
In the window that opens, write the command diskpart and press the button Enter. An invitation line to work with the utility will appear – DISKPART>;
4.
Enter the command list disk and press the button Enter. You will see all the disks installed on your computer;
5.
We select the disk with which we will work. To do this, enter the command select disk 0, where “0” is the disk number in the list, i.e. for my external drive there will be a command select disk 1. Click the button Enter, the message Disk 1 selected will appear;
6.
Next, you need to find all partitions on the selected disk. Enter the command list partition and press the button Enter.
7.
We select the section we will work with. Enter the command select partition 1, where 1 is the section number in the list, i.e. for the section that we make active. Click Enter, a message will appear Section 1 selected.
8.
Mark the selected partition as active, to do this, enter the command active. Click the button Enter, a message will appear DiskPart: Partition marked as active.
That's all. Good luck.
Yes... An experienced admin should have everything =) and a hard drive is not only a very large and capacious flash drive! Unlike a flash drive, you can make several partitions on it for different needs - for information, for garbage, and also make a boot partition...
The question is - why?
I personally needed it to install slax-linux there! What this gives is a familiar environment for working in any conditions, on any computer... but it happens that Linux is very often used to fix its poor brother - Windows... For example, remove files from a dead Windows, repartition the hard drive, change forgotten password in Windows, it is possible to manually find and remove malware or using Clam antivirus... You can also make a system image using dd...
Now external hard drive and quite capacious, and if there is data on it, then it can be problematic to merge it somewhere so as not to lose it during formatting...
But this is not important, the important thing is that we only need 20-30 free gigabytes - a little for the system and not a lot for data and related software.
And so let's start creating a boot disk....
We will need an external hard drive, ideally empty, not ideally with data, it would be better if it has a 3.0 interface (even USB 2.0), it works much faster.
Also OS Windows XP or higher.
Free staking program hard drives Wondershare Disk Manager Free (perverts can get by with Disk Manager in Windows)
In my case, this is Disk1 and it is not partitioned. In your case, there will be one partition, possibly NTFS, but as a rule the default is FAT32.
I'll have to create a couple of partitions:
I allocate sufficient space for the boot disk and click Next
And in order not to suffer in the distant future, I set the disk label - BOOT (not necessary) in the line below, Partition Type - select Primary. then, by analogy, I create a second partition with the NTFS type and a label, usually Data, only not Primary, but Logical.
Click Apply in the toolbar and agree. Our hard drive is repartitioned, as a rule - this is a matter of seconds.
If there is a disk with data and there is a lot of it and there is nowhere to make a backup... Then we take a risk - we change the size of the existing size:
Allocate enough free space:
And create a Primary partition with FAT32 and the BOOT label:
Click Apply again and wait... how long depends on the amount of data, since the data will be moved to the end of the disk from the freed up space. Once I allocated 30 gigabytes, it took about 5 hours.... So, be patient and pray that the electricity doesn’t run out!
Ideally, of course, make a backup of the data...
So, the disk is partitioned as it should, but it is not yet possible to boot from it; the Primary partition must be marked as active so that Computer bios I understood that you can boot from it:
We agree and click Apply and as a result, the disk becomes bootable.
If we want to install Windows from it, then simply copy the files from the installation installation to the root of the Boot disk. Windows disk 7, 8, 8.1 and we can download and install....
If we still need to install an OS for a thuja heap of various operations, then - =)
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