Download Easy2Boot (v1 Beta06 works fine) and put all the files at the root of the partition.

Format your USB key with a single FAT partition (I recommend gparted).

Under Windows, you can use the RMPrepUSB software (freeware/not opensource) to prepare your USB key.

The drawbacks is that you have a partition overlapping the other (this is not a problem, at least under Linux), and you have to make sure that the FAT filesystem will not fragment your ISO files when you copy them on the key. This method is more “ISO generic” and can boot many ISO files (99% of Live Linuxes). It’s probably the most reliable solution, but it’s not cheap, and bigger that a small USB key.Įasy2Boot, with grub4dos scripting, uses a nice trick ( described here): when the iso file is chosen from the boot menu, a DOS partition (number 4) is created starting and ending at the position of the. You also have hardware usb disk drives emulating a cdrom device. Another drawback is that you will loose the SYSLINUX boot menus of the distros, because it loads directly the Linux kernels. It’s not as simple as dropping your ISOs in a folder: you have to use the software to build the multiboot usb key. At this time, the problem of those programs is that they use specific “tricks” for each distribution to build a menu that will load directly the Linux kernel. I found solutions like YUMI (Your Universal Multiboot Installer (windows) or MultiSystem.

After some research I found several posts saying that generic ISO chainloading is very hard ( p1 p2). Easy2Boot does exactly that!īooting an ISO file is complex because lots of live operating systems expect to be at the root of a DOS partition. I was looking for a system allowing to drop the ISOs in a folder on the key, just showing a menu with the ISO files to boot. I mean a way to include many downloaded ISO files in a single USB stick. I’ve spent days looking for a good live Multiboot USB solution.

Grub4dos chenall