Your Preferred Live USB Creation Tool

[BK_123]

Hey guys. So I am just wanting to know what members here use to create a Live USB to put tools like Hiren's or Clonezilla on. I've been using YUMI but thinking of a change. Has anyone used UNetbootin and is it any good?

 

[crazyman143]

I've been using a tool called easy2boot. It formats your usb drive with a grub menu and provides various folders for you to drop ISOs in. Then, just boot and select an ISO of your choice.

At first glance it can appear difficult to set up, but it's not.

 

[cb600fshornet]

I never found one better than YUMI really, does the job great!

 

[BK_123]

Someone told me that Sardu SARDU multiboot creator with legacy - EFI support is supposed to be good only because they like its GUI but I too think YUMI is great and gets the job done.

 

[strollin]

I have an external hdd in a Zalman ZM-VE300 case. This case has a "Virtual ODD" mode that allows you to copy any ISO to the drive and then boot from it as if it was a CD/DVD. There's no menus or setup to deal with just copy the ISO to the drive and you can then boot from it (provided it's a bootable image). I have dozens of ISOs on mine.

::: Zalman, leading the world of Quiet Computing Solutions :::

 

[setishock]

It has a USB 3.0 interface but only supports SATA I/II laptop drives? And they brag about 5Gbps transfer speed. Must be one hell of a FIFO buffer on the support card. The program is in the firmware on the support card. Although it's a slick idea I just don't trust the rest of their claims. What did you give for that?

BTW I use YUMI.

 

[strollin]

I think I paid around $45 for it. I don't give a hoot about it's data transfer speed since I use it as a virtual ODD and it's significantly faster that any CD, DVD or USB thumb drive. I only have a 160GB drive in mine but it has dozens of ISOs on it and the drive still has plenty of space left for more.

What I don't like about any of the menu based USB software solutions is that the ones I have looked at only support certain OSes and such that can be configured in the menu. With the Zalman, any ISO of a CD or DVD that I can copy to the drive can be booted from. There's ZERO configuration required.

As an example, from the YUMI web page:

YUMI-2.0.1.8.exe – June 17, 2015 – Changelog
Update to support newer GRML 2014-11, CentOS 7, Clonezilla 2.4.2-10, and Ultimate Edition 4.

No updates needed for the Zalman.

 

[BK_123]

Ooh I like the sound of that..

 

[crazyman143]

Strollin, How does it do with the new UEFI Bios systems?

 

[strollin]

If the system is capable of booting from an optical drive, then it can boot from the Zalman. Of course, just like with a real CD, if you're trying to install a different OS then you will need to turn Secure Boot off.