by One of the best tools to have for any technician is loaded USB sticks with tools. But having a USB stick with every tool you need can be annoying. You might need to carry around 5 different Memory sticks to get the job done! wouldn’t be nice to have a USB stick that has everything you need on it? like windows installer, Linux distros, antivirus, disk utility tools, system tools? With this tutorial, we going to learn how to make all that on one USB Stick.
Step One: Get Yumi
Yumi is a great tool and it’s able to flash multiple disk images on one USB stick. Once it creates a memory stick it will make a boot menu that allows you to boot to whatever you want. Normally it’s used for testing all kinds of Linux distros, but we are using it for making a Muti-boot USB drive.
You can Download Yumi here. There will be two different versions. One is for older computers with legacy bios, then the other one is for computers that have UEFI bios. The one I’m using for this tutorial is the UEFI version. But if you’re using a computer that’s older than 2009 download the legacy version.
Step two: Get Iso’s
We going to need ISO’s for installing on the USB drive. Here are some of my recommendations.
Ubuntu – Ubuntu is a good go-to tool. Giving you a desktop environment where you can perform recover data, or attempt to fix the operating system.
Memtest86 – Having a tool for memory testing ain’t a bad idea.
Windows Installer – Installer for windows is a good idea for both fixing issues or just installing windows.
Also having some anti-virus rescue environments isn’t a too bad idea too. Here Are a few I know of, Kaspersky rescue disk and Eset SysRescue disk.
Step three: Prep USB Stick
Be sure to backup any data that’s on the USB drive you might want on the drive before continuing. Unplug any USB drive’s in your computer besides the one we going to be using while doing this! This can save you a lot of headaches later!
Step Four: Flashing ISO Images Using Yumi onto the USB drive.
Select the drive you’re going to use in the “Step 1” box selection box. (It should be the only if your following are following my instructions! Also, checking the size will help verify you got the right one.)
Then check “We Will Fat32 Format Drive!” box.(note: Do not check this if you’re adding more boot partitions or coming from step five!)
In step 2 selection box, select the type of Iso image you’re going to use. Then in step 3, find and select the Iso file location you’re going to use. Then push Create.
Step five: Add More!
To put more on the Usb stick there will be an option to run the tool again saying “Would you like to add more ISOs/Distros Now On (your drive letter):?“. saying yes to this option well start the process again from step four.
Note: If you exit by accident or want to add more boot options, just run the tool again. It will automatically know that the drive has other boot images and install alongside them. Be sure that you don’t have the format option check next time around!
Step Six: Give It A Boot-Up.
First, you need to disable secure boot in your bios. Hit the key for your bios(Esc, F1,F2 or del) and find your boot options and disable secure boot. (note: This can different base on the bios of your computer, So you might need to go hunting for it. The Pictures I have here are for my HP laptop computer)
Once you did that, Place the USB stick in the computer then hit the key for the boot menu for that as it starts up.
(It could be many different buttons depending on the bios. Here are some common ones I know of F1,F8,F9,F12)
Select and press to boot the USB drive and it should boot to the YUMI selection screen!
Browse to the ISO you want then select and boot.
