How To Make USB Drive Bootable

February 15, 2009 · 26 comments

USB drives and portable disks are more in than Floppy drives and CDs these days. So here is a short tutorial on how you can make a USB drive or a portable drive a bootable disk to rescue system and run your System (Windows) without a floppy or CD disk.
Follow these steps to make USB drive bootable

  • Download two files ‘Command File’ and ‘HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool’.
  • Make a folder with name ‘BOOT’ and extract the file ‘Command’ in BOOT folder.
  • Now install the other utility (HP USB Disk Storage Format).
  • Open installed utility (HP USB Disk Storage Format) and in ‘Device’ filed select device that you want to make bootable (USB drive etc) Also check the option ‘Create A DOS Startup Disk’.
  • Now press the browse button to locate the BOOT folder and hit the Start button.


These simple steps will make your USB drive (or any other portable drive) a bootable drive. To use this bootable drive on any computer always go to Bios Setting to select USB drive as ‘First Boot Device’.

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{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }

IRFAN February 16, 2009 at 1:07 pm

Nice Trick.
Thanks

Reply

Nadia Gafoor February 23, 2009 at 7:09 am

useful for me.

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Tech eSpot February 28, 2009 at 8:09 am

That’s Great!
I really Appreciate it.

Keep it Up.

Regards
Jenney MaC

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tanveer March 1, 2009 at 10:19 am

nice trick thanx

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imran March 4, 2009 at 8:00 pm

nice trick thanx
(GOD BLESS U)

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Hasan March 5, 2009 at 11:17 am

Awesome trick, very useful.

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webmaster April 4, 2009 at 12:40 am

Thanx

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shailesh April 18, 2009 at 12:19 am

very helpful tutorial…..
….
……….thanx a lot

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annabel May 24, 2009 at 12:51 am

hi, guess i needed some help here. I installed the hp utility on my vista (32bit) but when I tried to open the app, it tells me “permission denied, need admin right”. But my account is an admin right account. Is vista the issue here? any or comments would be appreciated. thanks…

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Phred May 27, 2009 at 7:47 pm

Bel, Rightclick the hp utility and choose ‘Run as admin…’. Should work.

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Jarrod June 23, 2009 at 10:19 am

hey annabel right clickon it in your start bar and clickrun as administrator

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prim June 30, 2009 at 10:35 am

hi, when i click start it says “there are no valid DOS system file at the specified location”.
please help.

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Jay July 19, 2009 at 4:10 pm

Thanks! Well done, you’re the only person that’s got it right!

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Hemang July 30, 2009 at 8:06 am

Its of no use for me… as, it is making the drive windows 98 bootable, which can not read Windows XP NTFS Partitions.

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michael August 4, 2009 at 4:01 am

if the usb connot detect

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bb bates August 4, 2009 at 12:13 pm

worked well. thanks!

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Grant September 18, 2009 at 4:21 am

If the USB ext HDD is too big, you cannot format in FAT or FAT32, therefore you cannot make a DOS startup disk. I think you should make it clear up to what size USB ext device you can use.

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dave.P October 3, 2009 at 5:49 pm

Thank you Sir. I wish I hadn’t had to read so much b.s. on the net before finding your perfect solution. It worked a treat and has allowed me to make a ghost image on my Eee PC.

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George October 22, 2009 at 6:20 am

Hello,

Thanks this was very helpefull….but i want to install windows aftel this…

I make the USB bootable and copy windows to USB stick
I restart the computer and boot from usb..and i run setup.exe to install windows xp ..and it dosn’t work…

I don’t have a CD-rom to instal from it
Could you help me ??
tank you

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HEX-Darwaish December 27, 2009 at 10:26 am

i’ve a ques

“will it work on my dell optiplex GX1″

although it doesn’t support boot from USB in Bios

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Muhammad February 17, 2010 at 12:44 am

Hi all
To be able to boot from a usb(key or flashdrive), motherboard(bios) has to support it. Most newer do, not all. Then the usb key itself must support booting, not all usb keys boot no matter how good utilities are. Few do.

I have had over years bought 10 usbs. Only 3 boot, and they are all small. Majors ones, a 4g, 8g and 32g don’t boot.

All people above and beyond who succeeded must have above conditions.
Will appreciate to hear the specifics (name, model etc.) of the usb from someone who has bootable usb, 8gb or larger.
I can say here 1gb Penny, 2gb Adata, 4gb Kingston DataTraveler, 8GB Patriot, 32GB OCZ Atv don’t boot.

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khalid April 20, 2010 at 7:30 pm

it always workable whatever condition

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saffi July 16, 2010 at 10:56 am

It worked for me on a 16gb kingston usb 2 memory stick. My netbook Dell L2100 booted like a win98 and quickly gave me c prompt.
Only way I could work after this was to put ghost or other software on the actual memory stick and use it that way. You can only work with what is there on memory stick. it does not let you connect to eg external cdrom, or another memory stick.
Any way this workable solution got me somehwhere and I manage to take image of netbook on to memory stick. Thanks.
Saffi

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mustafa July 20, 2010 at 5:50 pm

hey thnx man now i can install win xp on my mini leptop …… thnx alot dude

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Stusty July 23, 2010 at 1:26 pm

it wont work! *** there is no valid DOS system files at the specific location***
what should i do??

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shin August 31, 2010 at 12:57 pm

THANK YOU!!

Reply

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