What makes a usb drive bootable

Another very useful, though less often utilized bootable flash drive would be the utility drive. Hiren's Boot CD and Ultimate Boot CD were both great examples of tools contained on a CD that could partition hard disks, diagnose problems, test hardware, and repair or replace software outside of the native operating system.

Hiren's and UBCD were then installed on a bootable flash drive, making these into extremely durable and portable repair tools in your toolkit. It also included virus scanning and data repair tools that were more thorough simply because they could sift through the information on your hard drive without executing any erroneous commands contained therein.

If you have ever experienced malware, spyware or malicious code on your computer, you know that its primary goal is to hijack your computer and execute various commands through the operation system, usually without you or your computer any the wiser. In this case, the bootable utility drive could intervene and remove the malware without needing to execute any contained code on the infected disk.

Both of these uses we have covered so far assume that your computer is in some state of disrepair. What if you simply wanted to test drive a new operating system without any permanent changes to your current setup on your computer?

Linux is a family of open-source operating systems designed to replace privately-owned operating systems and intended to be publicly licensed and maintained. A Linux LiveCD on a flash drive will allow you to experience an operating system while still keeping your current setup.

It's a great way to discover if a particular Linux distribution is a good choice for you or your organization. With all of the flavors available, you could breathe new life into old hardware by installing a lightweight Linux build, gaining a fully functional OS with all of the tools you use now, yet not bogged down by the overcomplexity of a closed source OS.

This has a MBR master boot record which hold the partition info. This can be more than one. The problem is that most OS's operating systems cannot see more than one when on a usb drive. For a usb drive to be able to boot it must also be set active. The standard OS format routine is not designed to do this. So a more specialised formatting application is required to do the job. However, it also contains three formatting applications which can be used from within the main application.

As these are full programs in their own right, if you can find them on your hard drive, you can create links to run them directly from the desktop.

Needless to say, these are all Windows based applications. Another Windows based application which might be useful is SDformatter by Panasonic. There are from the same family of technology. Apart from the usual quick format option, there is a full erase and re-size option. The risk, as with all low level formatting techniques, is that there is a possibility of making the USB memory stick unusable. I had the same issue "black screen with flashing cursor" even though my new SanDisk USB drive was marked active and the same bootable material was copied from a known working bootable USB stick.

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What is it that makes some USB sticks not-bootable? Ask Question. Asked 6 years, 11 months ago. Active 2 years, 6 months ago. Viewed k times. The Windows 7 USB install tool doesn't recognize it either.

I also tried formatting with the Windows tools, and tried to make a partition of only 20GB. Improve this question. Community Bot 1.

That is odd, I've never ran into this issue! I've always used diskpart and set the partition as Active and that was enough. Apparently somebody else's had this problem, too.

It looks like there are some flash drives that just can't be booted from. Perhaps check out: What makes bootable media bootable? Unfortunately, neither solve my problem nor do they answer my question.

I recently built my first gaming PC, and despite my mild comfort level with Terminal, I still found using a Windows computer to be a safer and easier process.

Microsoft has a dedicated tool that you can use to download the Windows 10 system image also referred to as ISO and create your bootable USB drive. Once the download finishes, double-click the file called MediaCreationToolxxxx to run it. The last four digits of the file name indicate the version number of Windows Right now, the filename is MediaCreationTool21H1 , but that will change as newer versions are released.

The file should be in your Downloads folder. You'll be asked to select the language, edition and architecture you want to use. By default, the tool will use the best options for the PC you're creating the boot drive on.

You can change any of the options by unchecking the box next to Use the recommended options for this PC and using the drop-down options. If you're unsure about whether you need a bit or a bit architecture, select Both from the Architecture drop-down. Note, that according to Microsoft's support page, if you plan on using this tool to flash a different edition of Windows 10, such as Windows 10 Pro or vice versa on a different PC, it will be included when you select Windows 10 as the Edition.

In fact, basic Windows 10 is the only option, so don't stress yourself looking for a Pro option. Select Next to continue. We exclusively use corsair flash padlock 2 for everything USB here.

Spucr Dec 30, at UTC. Baxio This person is a verified professional. This person is a verified professional. See, I have better luck with el Cheapo flash drives. Best regards Joerg. Grid-C wrote Pure Capsaicin. DragonsRule This person is a verified professional. Chris Dec 30, at UTC. I haven't had any issues. Maybe they do it differently than you would? I don't know, I've only used Yumi, which apparently is based on the same stuff, but it's always worked for me.

Couldn't hurt to try it, right? This could be seen as Part 2 or Part 4 of the challange to make a stick bootable, so called Advanced Boot capabilities if the stick is bootable at all :- That's what I meant with "additional confusion" - can't find the correct english expression of "muddy the waters" ;- Ah, I see what you mean. I just look at it as an automated tool to get the job done easily and simply. Upps, haven't seen the changes within the last minutes Baxio wrote