You might encounter case when you need to create a bootable drive to install an OS but the only thing you have on hand is just USB Drive (Thumb Drive/Memory Key)
The is especially true for netbook nowadays as they pretty much lack of optical drive.
You try to format the USB Drive in window and you surprise to see you can only format to FAT32/NTFS (according to the drive size) and there is not make boot option in the tool.
Note: In order to boot from USB Drive, the computer BIOS need to support booting form USB Device feature (Anything after P4 age should be good)
- Get the ultimate HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool (Version: 2.1.8 seem most stable)
http://www.bay-wolf.com/utility/usbkey/usbmemkeyboot.zip
- Get a copy of old Win9x / DOS system file (below or bootdisk.com). Extract the file into a new folder.
http://www.bay-wolf.com/utility/usbkey/win98boot.zip
- Plug in your USB Drive, and run the HP USB Tool.
PS: You need to have administrator right on Vista/Win7. Right Click –> Run as Administrator
- Select the USB Drive, File System as FAT32 and create a DOS Startup disk using the DOS system file we extracted earlier on.
- Copy all the file in the extracted folder to the newly format USB Drive. This will enable CD-ROM and mouse support.
Now you got yourself a bootable USB Drive !!!!
You can boot to DOS using this drive and run OS Setup and other stuff.
In order to boot from USB Drive, please check your motherboard manual on how to do so, this can be set in BIOS Setup.
For Dell system, F12 will bring out the boot menu to let you choose the boot device.