Install windows7/8/linux/whatever all from the same usb stick?

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Maximilian

Maximilian

Lifer
Feb 8, 2004
12,604
15
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Is this possible? What would I do, partition the stick and just go about it as normal? Any pitfalls to this?

I can buy a 32GB fast usb3 drive and two slow as balls 16GB USB2 drives or one big 64GB fast usb3 drive, same price.

If it could all be done with the one large stick then thats a bonus. If it cant or its going to be a pain to do then ill probably roll with the 3 separate sticks.
 
BrightCandle

BrightCandle

Diamond Member
Mar 15, 2007
4,762
0
76
I don't think its really possible just based on the way they boot. It might be possible with a linux bootloader to choose between them but based on the way Win 7 and Win 8 get onto USB sticks its not immediately obvious how you go about doing it.

However one thing I saw recently was this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Zalman-ZM-V...UTF8&colid=17B2OG9RMU7BL&coliid=I9A9I92N8J2UY

Basically its an external HDD with an interface that allows you to make it look like a CD/DVD and play from ISOs you have stored on it. Now that can do multiple boots like you are looking for and might be another solution. Although honestly its a lot cheaper to buy 4x 4GB USB 2.0 sticks for $15 and stick a label on each for what it holds than it is to do either of these other solutions.
 
Maximilian

Maximilian

Lifer
Feb 8, 2004
12,604
15
81
Ah I see, so partitioning the USB stick and giving each OS a separate partition, wont fly then? The EFI wont recognise different partitions only different devices?
 
BrightCandle

BrightCandle

Diamond Member
Mar 15, 2007
4,762
0
76
Maximilian said:
Ah I see, so partitioning the USB stick and giving each OS a separate partition, wont fly then? The EFI wont recognise different partitions only different devices?
Click to expand...

There is only one bootsector that the UEFI cares about. So if you want it to multiboot that bootsector needs to contain a special bootsector that can redirect to other partitions on the same device. Linux has been using grub for a decade to dual boot with Windows. Its technically possible to do this of that I have no doubt, but its not something that is all that easy to setup considering how Windows 8 gets onto a USB stick (with their own custom software solution that just destroys the contents of the USB completely to install itself). Windows boot via UEFI and grub just don't play very nice these days so I really don't know how feasible it is in the post bios world.
 
A

ashetos

Senior member
Jul 23, 2013
254
14
76
I've tried to do this in the past and came up with some issues.

We know this is possible with hard disk drives and it works as long as you keep a certain order when installing the OSes. Old Windows -> Newer Windows -> Linux. Old Windows treats the hard disk drive as it likes. Newer Windows identifies Old Windows (because its newer) and it takes actions as to not destroy it. Finally, Linux installs a custom boot loader (e.g. grub2) that identifies all Windows and Linux partitions and creates a menu that chainloads to the individual boot loaders.

Now, why does this not work with USB storage? Well, because all these installations are tied to the specific hardware of the PC. Windows contain the specific drivers and configurations, Linux is a little bit more versatile. This means that, even if you manage to create such a setup, it will be useless in a different PC than the one you installed it to.

This is the reason why there are the so called "live" installation images. So, you would like to install in a generic way, with a lot of drivers for all possible hardware configurations, which would load at boot time depending on the machine hardware you're trying to use.

Now, linux goes live very easily, almost all distributions support it. On the other hand, the only windows live version I know of is the Windows To Go, only for Windows 8. Even that has many limitations in theory, I have not tested it.

If UEFI becomes a problem for whatever reason, you can always try to boot the PC in legacy BIOS mode, if supported. Some linux tools support installing the boot loader with both UEFI and legacy support, such as livecd-iso-to-disk from Fedora Linux. Such tools support using a FAT32 formatted usb disk that contains a read-only .iso image and a couple of diff files for subsequent changes in storage; as a result, you can boot into multiple linux images without partitioning the flash disk, which is very convenient, since you can use it "live" or as storage, or both! Installing newer versions for boot loaders also supports NTFS formatted USB disks.

I haven't come up with a solution for the "live" Windows problem. Also, this process is quite tedious for users who are not familiar with low level linux operations such as configuring boot loaders for multiple installations.

This is a really good question and I'm also interested in anything that can even partially solve the problem.
 
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