Please note that this post was migrated to my new blog platform. There may be bad formating, broken links, images, downloads and so on. If you need an item on this page, please contact me and I will do my best to get it from my backups.
I find myself Bing-ing this every few months to make sure I included each and every step. So often, that I can’t believe I still Bing it. So below is a manual for anyone (mostly me) to follow in the future.
USB Boot Linux, Windows or any other operating system
You will be creating a bootable usb drive with Windows 7 or Vista’s diskpart utility. Even though you are using Windows to create the bootable device, the source disk should not matter as long as the os supports booting from fat32. You can have a Linux iso mounted as the source, and the usb stick will end up being a Linux bootable usb.
Without further ado, on with the steps.
Creating a bootable USB device
In Windows 7 or Vista, open a command prompt. A shortcut is to press WINDOWS-KEY + R and then type CMD, press ENTER.
C:\Users\eduncan911> diskpart
DISKPART> list disk
Inspect the list and note which one is the USB drive. Tip: It’s most likely the last one.
DISKPART> select disk 1
Where 1 is the disk number from the list disk command above.
DISKPART> detail disk
The detail disk step above lists the details of the selected disk. Make sure the correct one is listed. If not, go back to list disk and start over.
DISKPART> clean
DISKPART> create partition primary
DISKPART> select partition 1
DISKPART> active
DISKPART> format fs=fat32 quick label=“USB_16GB”
DISKPART> assign
DISKPART> detail disk
Note the drive letter listed in the column labeled LTR.
DISKPART> exit
C:\Users\eduncan911> xcopy d:*.* g:\ /E /F
Where d:\ is your mounted ISO or DVD you want to copy from, and g:\ is the USB device to copy to.
C:\Users\eduncan911> exit
And that’s it. Go stick it in something and boot it.