Create a bootable USB-disk for installations and tools using .iso images

The Acronis way

This method uses Grub4Dos and standard windows/dos utilities. Works only for smaller images (less than 2GB) and only for Legacy boot (not UEFI). See links at the end of the article for other methods.

Cloned from: https://kb.acronis.com/content/57232

Downloading grub4dos

Download grub4dos utility and grub installer to your computer and unpack them.
Currently, the latest version of grub4dos is grub4dos-0.4.4.zip and the latest version of grub installer is grubinst-1.1-bin-w32-2008-01-01.zip.

Making USB bootable

1. In Windows Explorer, open the installer’s folder and select grubinst_gui.exe:

2. Run the application:
Windows XP: Double-click grubinst_gui.exe
Windows 7 or later: Right-click grubinst_gui.exe and select Run as administrator:

3. Select Disk, then click Refresh and select the drive you want to create a bootable media on:

You can detect your drive by its size. In this example an 8GB flash drive is used.

3. In Part List click Refresh.

4. From the dropdown box select Whole disk (MBR):

5. Check the Don’t search floppy option, leave all the other options unchecked:

6. Click Install.
If the installation completes successfully, you will see this message:

7. Press Enter.

8. In Windows Explorer open the grub4dos folder, locate grldr and copy it to the target drive:

Creating ISO files of Acronis products

  1. Run the media builder of Acronis True Image.
  2. Select ISO file when offered to choose media destination:
  3. Create the ISO. You can save the ISO file directly to your flash drive or copy in later.
  4. Run the media builder of Acronis Disk Director.
  5. Select ISO file when offered to choose media destination:
  6. Create the ISO. You can save the ISO file directly to your flash drive or copy in later.

Setting up multiproduct boot

  1. Copy the ISO files to the flash drive if you haven’t done it yet. Now you should have 3 files on the drive:
  2. Open Notepad.
  3. Insert this content:
    timeout 10
    default 0title Acronis Disk Director
    map –mem –heads=0 –sectors-per-track=0 (hd0,0)/<DiskDirector>.iso (hd32)
    map –hook
    chainloader (hd32)
    boot

    title Acronis True Image
    map –mem –heads=0 –sectors-per-track=0 (hd0,0)/<TrueImage>.iso (hd32)
    map –hook
    chainloader (hd32)
    boot

    title CommandLine
    commandline

    title Reboot
    reboot

    title Halt
    halt

where <DiskDirector> is the name of the ISO file created in Acronis Disk Director and <TrueImage> is the ISO file created with Acronis True Image.

4. Save the file as menu.lst to the root directory of your flash drive. In Save as type select All files, otherwise the file might be saved as a .txt-file while we need a .lst-file.

You can double-check the file extention in Windows Explorer:

If you don’t see the extention, check this article for help.

Now your USB drive is ready and you can boot your computer with it.

Other methods

YUMI – Multiboot USB Creator

Ventoy – A New Bootable USB Solution

Recommended tools to put on the USB-drive

MiniTool Partition Wizard

The best partition manager
Version 9 and 9.1 is downloadable from here: http://www.it.nrru.ac.th/download/utilities/ (140MB)

HDClone

HDClone 6 Free Edition

Trinity Rescue Kit

Trinity Rescue Kit

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