Bootable USB Flash Drive

Nate explores the unnecessarily complex world of creating a bootable USB drive and shows you how to make it a lot simpler than it may have seemed.

So you just got your new computer from Dell, HP, etc. and for some reason who knows what you need to boot from a boot disk. AHHHH WTF!!! They didn’t install a floppy drive on my computer. That is ok because you have come to the right place. I am going to show you how to turn your USB Flash Drive into a boot disk (they come with many new computers instead of floppy drives)

Get the Stuff

For this tutorial there are some things you will need to have:

1. USB Flash Drive
2. HP USB Flash Drive Format Tool (Archive password is "pasta")
   
3. Win98 Boot Disk or the Files
   
4. Some of these Programs (makes the disk more useful)

Getting it Ready

After downloading the HP Format Tool install it. Get your boot disk or the downloadable files and copy/extract them to a folder on your HD. Make sure anything on your USB Drive is backed up because we are going to format it...

Make it Bootable

• Open the HP Format Tool
  Start/Programs/Hewlett-Packard Company/HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool
• It should automatically select your USB Drive.
• Select FAT or FAT32 Under File System.
• Select Create a DOS startup disk
• Select using DOS system files located at and point to the folder containing the boot disk files.
• Then click Start

Add Some More Stuff

As is your new boot disk can’t do much other than boot the computer to DOS so you need to add other programs to make it more useful. I put a small list of files and programs together it is located at http://www.cfists.com/usb.htm

Using It

This can be tricky since most older computers do not support booting to USB Devices. You will have to go into the BIOS and play around with the boot sequence trying things like USB ZIP etc. You will have less trouble with newer systems.

Written by Nate on Sunday, 23 October 2005. Tagged with usb, tutorials, hardware. Read 125466 times. If you liked it, please give it a digg.

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#1 — Author comment /* 2 years, 5 months ago */

The link the the windows boot disk files is dead please download the files from my site at

http://www.cfists.com/files/HPUSBFW_BOOTFILES.zip

Nate

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Nate Assistant Admin

#2 /* 2 years, 3 months ago */

Did everything but cannot boot from my USB flash drive. Going to try this one. Wish me good luck.

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KRIS Anonymous User

#3 /* 2 years, 3 months ago */

Your link to HP USB Flash Drive Format Tool does'nt work is there anywhere else I can get this program?? thanks

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Ralph Anonymous User

#4 /* 2 years, 2 months ago */

http://rapidshare.de/files/8545026/USB_Boot.zip

PASS: pasta

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Jacob Anonymous User

#5 — Author comment /* 2 years, 2 months ago */

There are a few places to find the tool You can just google "HP SP27213.exe" I have put it up on my site but at times its really slow so if you can't get it from there try searching

http://www.cfists.com/files/SP27213.exe

Nate

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Nate Assistant Admin

#6 /* 2 years, 2 months ago */

I'm just adding a mirror now. I'll update the article when they're uploaded.

QuoteSiteProfile

Oli Numero Uno

#7 /* 2 years, 1 month ago */

Thanks for this!

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Ali Anonymous User

#8 /* 2 years, 9 months ago */

Your instructions worked perfectly for me. I originally downloaded HP's "HP Drive Key Boot Utility", but that only allowed you to use an "Image" of a boot disk. The program I got from "Mirror2" above was a more user friendly version. I also had to use your download of the "bootfiles" because the program wouldn't recognize copies of my WIN98 boot disk files. I really appreciate you putting together this site all the files to perform this task...it has allowed me to Flash my BIOS without a floppy drive.

Thanks again,

DIV

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BigDIV Anonymous User

#9 /* 1 year, 6 months ago */

i have just got a USB to plug into my computer,but i am not sure how it works. i am new to these computer and need alot of help with some thing. so if any one can give me and info on this divice it would be most apprecated. thank u mary

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mary hernandez Anonymous User

#10 /* 14 months, 2 days ago */

The one actually works....... I have a Kingston 2 GB USB and now I can boot with my USB Stick.... followed the instructions and voila.... BANG !

Good stuff!

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Anthony I Anonymous User

1 to 10 of 43 < 1 2 3 4 5 >

Don't just sit there like a lemon! Reply!

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