Making a bootable USB thumbdrive from a bootable Windows CD

Background

• Tietz PC on J2100 has non-functional CDROM drive
• Need to back up this PC (clone the drive), and need to boot from other media

Preparation

• USB thumb drive (1 GB plenty of space)
• HP USB Disk Storage tool -- Windows program which formats USB drive as FAT32, writes MBR, adds DOS files
• Windows 98 system files -- the MS DOS needed to boot
• Grub4DOS -- needed to boot into CD image
• Bootable CD ROM

Procedure

• Plug USB drive into Windows XP computer (drive will be wiped)
• On Windows XP, install HP USB Disk Storage tool
• On Windows XP, unzip the Windows 98 system files into some temporary folder
• Run HP USB Disk Storage tool (under Windows 7, right click and run as Administrator)
• Choose to install system files, and select directory of unzipped Win98 files
• Can now remove USB drive
• Plug USB drive into linux box and mount it (say it is at sda)
• In linux, make image of CD using K3b or equivalent
• Copy image onto USB drive (say it is "image.iso")
• unzip the program grub4dos
• Install grub onto USB drive as follows

sudo ./bootlace.com /dev/sda

• copy following files from grub4dos onto USB drive:
  • config.sys
  • grldr
  • grldr.mbr (maybe not needed?)
  • grub
  • grub.exe
  • menu.lst
• Edit config.sys so it reads as follows:

   DEVICE=GRUB.EXE
   INSTALL=GRUB.EXE
   SHELL=GRUB.EXE

• Edit menu.lst so it includes the following :

title Title of my bootable cd
map --mem --read-only (hd0,0)/image.iso (hd32)
map --hook
chainloader (hd32)
boot[/size]

• Can delete most/all other titles from menu.lst, as they are not relevant
• Drive is now ready

Use

• Insert USB drive into system
• Reboot, choose bootable USB device
• Menu should come up with option to boot from cd image

Files needed

• grib4dos.zip: grub for dos (modifications to menu.lst and config.sys already done)

• win98boot.zip: windows 98 system files

• SP27608.exe: HP boot USB creation utility

References

• grub4dos: https://gna.org/projects/grub4dos/ , http://grub4dos.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Grub4dos_tutorial
• HP USB disk formatting tool: http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197
• Windows 98 system files: http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=196

Boot your system from a floppy (Much easier)

• insert floppy into drive
• format floppy
  • mkfs -V -t msdos /dev/fd0
• use grub to transfer boot loader to floppy
  • grub> find /boot/grub/stage1 (or find /grub/stage1)
    • (hd1,0)
  • grub> root (hd1,0) (this specifies the source bootloader)
  • grub> setup (fd0) (this transfers to the floppy)
  • grub> quit

Update - Making a bootable Acronis 2014 USB Flash for backup

• use grub4dos
• all setup done in linux
• USB should be FAT32
• unzip grub4dos (attached) onto USB drive
• copy acronis2014.iso onto root of USB drive
• assuming USB is /dev/sdb

install bootloader onto USB

   cd /mnt/usb/grub4dos
   sudo ./bootlace.com /dev/sdb
   cd ..
   cp grub4dos/grldr .
   cp grub4dos/grldr.mbr .
   cp grub4dos/menu.lst .

Edit menu.lst as follows

color blue/green yellow/red white/magenta white/magenta
timeout 30
default /default

title Acronis 
fallback 1
  map (hd0,0)/acronis2014.iso (hd32)
  map --hook
  root (hd32)
  chainloader (hd32)
  boot


title commandline
commandline

title floppy (fd0)
chainloader (fd0)+1
rootnoverify (fd0)

title back to dos
quit

title reboot
reboot

title halt
halt

• Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW =

-- BillRice - 20 Mar 2009

* grub4dos-0.4.4-2009-06-20.zip: grub4dos, works for acronis 2014