Utility to make USB flash drives bootable
Related link:
http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/hpcpqdt/us/download/20306.html
I found a couple of links for creating bootable flash drives that I found useful.
How to boot from a USB device … has good instructions, and this worked for me, and took about 20 minutes.
Then I found this utility: HP bootable flash utility
And it worked for me as well, and took about a minute.
(old link: here)
The cool thing is, the HP utility is reported to work with many other flash drives - I have a no-name USB 2.0 thumb drive, made it bootable with the HP utility on a 1.1 USB bus, and then used it to boot a Via EPIA-M2 computer by setting the BIOS to “boot from USB hard drive”.
Although I’m quite comfortable with the command line and a 2 page FAQ, running a GUI and clicking “make bootable” sure speeds things up.
HP only
Did you use the HP format utility with an HP device or did it work with something non-HP? The download page basically says it’s only for use with “HP Drive Key or DiskOnKey USB 2.0″. So I guess the other question is, did you also use USB 2.0?
not HP only!
The HP utility worked on the random flash drive I had. I think there’s very little proprietary art in making any flash thumb drive bootable. They’re pretty standard.
No dice…
No man, it didn’t work for me… I have a SanDisk portable SD-card reader. Although it recognizes the device it can’t format in any way (says the drive is write protected) and I did check so that the write protection was not on.
Sucks major balls.
Cheers
Worked for me
Worked on my Lexar 1gig JumpDrive.
No dice…
I have a Sandisk ImageMate SDDR-93 and Kingston 128MB SD card and the HP utility worked perfectly as far as I can tell. I used an IBM a21p laptop which has usb1.1.
HP Software
I found out that there are two things that you need to have before you use this software package. First is an USB 2 device and access to Microsoft boot files. It will NOT work with any version IBM PC DOS that I tried, you may have better luck then I did but I found that Windows 98 has worked best so far.
Doesn’t work with LEXAR 128 + VIA EPIA TC
So I tried the HP tool with a Lexar 128Mb flash drive and an VIA EPIA TC. I’ve been told different things about USB 2.0 support in the southbridge chipset. Specifically I’ve heard that the bus does “USB 2.0 protocol” but at 1.1 speeds. So… maybe timing has something to do with it, or maybe the good folks at Via just don’t want you booting from a Jump Drive.
Fdisk may work
For those of you that are having problem with the HP utility you might want to use the DOS command fdisk utility and creat a DOS partition on the jump drive and then use the HP utility.
Just a thought…..
Works with Sandisk
I use utility on a Sandisk Cruzer mini 1.0 GB.
Work like a charm.
Doesn’t work with LEXAR 128 + VIA EPIA TC
Hi,
Lexar have their own utility, just email them and as for it. I did. I can’t get the Jumpdrive to
boot on my Mobo, but the utility put all the right files on the drive. I think it is an issue
with my MoBo? I have the makers looking at it!!
Nogo on PNY
I read the post and bought a 512 PNY -usb2.0 Flash Drive from BestBuy (on sale:) and I get the same write protect error as chillyman (and maybe others). Try all sorts of ways and nothing worked. Funny thing is there is no write protect switch on it. Also checked web site and found no utils for this not even a phone number or email for tech support (of course it’s 4am and I’m having trouble finding the trackball). Will try tomarrow and if all else fails, it goes back……29 bucks after rebates…hmmm.
Using the HP software
I tried the HP software on with WinXP. Because XP does not have any DOS boot files, it required another source for DOS. I tried various DOS bootable disks and CDs and found that the only one that it would not give an error message about was a true Microsoft DOS boot disk (MS-DOS 6.22). Secondly, it would not work with my SanDisk Mini-cruzer 256MB USB 2.0 drive. I got the infamous write protect message. There is no write protect switch on this device.
My conclusion is that the HP program is very limited in the conditions under which it will actually perform.
Transcend JetFlash 256 and DOS files
It worked for the JetFlash — for the DOS file location, I simply put in a floppy I had formatted in Windows XP with the ‘Create DOS bootable Floppy’ argument, and it worked just fine (since those *are* MS certified DOS bootable files *grin*)
HTH
This works with *ANY* bootable disk/OS and possibly with any USB Device
http://www.weethet.nl/english/hardware_bootfromusbstick.php
Quick and easy - err well I thought so until I typed the directions…
OK, this is the easiest way by far…you don’t need to find any files, or disks, and it won’t let you do it if it’s not correct.
First, double click on the usb removal icon, click on dispaly device componets, then click on storage device and click on properties, then go to policies, and then select optimize for performance, then click ok, and close.
Now make sure you look and see what drive letter your usb drive is using.
Now go to the run command and type in cmd for the command prompt. Here comes my favorite command because it brings me back to my dos days.
Now type this is, of course substituting your USB drive letter for the part where it says drive letter here.
format (drive letter here): /FS:NTFS /X
Now, once this has been completed, here is the trick, open up My Computer, and go up to and click, tools, options, view, and click on Show hidden files and folders, and uncheck Hide protected operating system files(recommended), click yes to the dialog box warning you about this, and then click apply and then ok. Ok, now click on your C Drive and browse down the the files ntdetect and ntldr and COPY them to the base folder of your flash drive.
Now your done.
If this doesn’t work, right click on the My Computer icon and then select Manage. Now go down to the Disk Management title on the left side of the window and click on it. This will load the logical disk manager and allow you to check to see if your USB drive has the partition set to active. If it doesn’t, right click on the lower window where it gives the information to your USB drive, and select Mark Partition as active.
Best of luck
P.S. Sorry so messy, but hopefully you can muddle though it.
How make USB thumbdrive boot disk and Read\write to NTFS partition
First you need download couple utilities :
1. HP bootable flash utility:
http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/hpcpqdt/us/download/20306.html
2. NTFS for DOS:
http://www.datapol.de/dpe/freeware/
Steps to make USB thumbdrive bootable and ability read\write to NTFS partition:
1. Format diskette using xp Select FAT as “file system” and check “create an MS-DOS Startup disk” under “format options”
2. Connect your USB thumbdrive to USB port on your computer
3. Using “HP USB Disk storage Tool” format your USB Drive select FAT as File system and check “create a DOS startup disk” option, “Using DOS system files located at:” the diskette created in step 1.
4. Change your bios to boot from USB first choice then verify that you can boot from your USB drive.
5. Using NTFS 4 DOS utility Click on “Create NTFS capable boot foloppy”. Select the Drive letter correspond to your USB drive and click Next then Next on the following screen.
6. If successfull you end-up with Emergency bootable USB drive that can read\write to NTFS partition.
HP only
People Have we forgetting our ways of reverse engineering, going to the core of the design to implement a rocksolid System? You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, here you yall our running to download the latest tool and hope it works..
WE ARE DEVOLPERS… THIS IS WHAT WE DO…
Here is my thoughts on this matter…
We need to approach the thought of creating an emulation package. We all know (with common sense) All bios’s are not going to recognize or allow jump drive recognition. However forcing an emulation of an floppy Drive will be a universal rock solid solution that will allow any jump drive to boot on any system…
(must i do everything my self?)
I will devolop a emulation package, and test it.. when I am done I will create a new category on my forum at http://support.studio505.net When I have finished the package I will notify you all it is availble for download…
My name is Rockdrala on my website if you have any design ideas or you want to bitch about something… PM on there…
HP only
Look… I dont appreciate the negative post by Kymeria whoever that is on my site in the shoutbox at http://support.studio505.net I am currently working on this project for free and its going to take me time to make it… so keep your panties on… Some patience would be appreciated
HP only
I am really intrested in the emulation of a floppy drive on an usb stick
Thanks Mr. Stolarz
This solution is working for me. I using with Symantec Ghost, to create a Boot USB Drive.
The Best Wishes.
Ruben Ramirez
Floppyless
This only works if you have the files from a boot floppy, have a floppy drive to make the files or something else. I’ve searched for over an hour now on google for the needed files but they are not to be found. I did find half a million utilities to make boot floppies if you have afloppy, but who has a floppy drive in this day and age?
Floppyless
You can always download a floppy image from somewhere like bootdisk.com, and use a floppy drive emulator to extract the files (there are several I’ve tried that worked fine - look for either “filedisk” or “vfd”/Virtual Floppy Drive).
If you use a floppy emulator, you can even use windows to format that disk and extract the files, so you don’t need to grab an image from bootdisk.com
Good luck!
bootfiles
The files you want are available from hp.com or mirror
Search on HPUSBFW_BOOTFILES (http://www.google.com/search?&q=HPUSBFW_BOOTFILES) or some similar variant
bootfiles
link to a better explanation (including links and downloads list of decent software, including linuxes and the boot files specified above):
http://www.apcstart.com/usb/
HP only
this sure seem like a hard way to do everything theirs been usb boot floopy disks available for years now go to bootdisk.com. do some research for once.with the disk layout from bootdisk.com my input and a relative of mine.we made a USB boot floppy that installed a universal usb mass storage driver. on a laptop computor that had a corupt os no cd drive as it was a remote addon device.and it was unavailiable-dead?.but it had a usb port.used a usb cd-rw drive the boot floppy installed abasic windows dos-98 start up drivers plus one extra option USB-cd rom hard drive support.wiped the hard drive clean formated it.then installed the 98 OS from the USB cd-rw drive worked perfectly. could have most likely used a USB jump drive-key drive-pen drive whatever the manufacturer wants to call them all you need is a minial install or a 1 gig drive formatted with another computor copy the install cd to it and it should work. and yes alot of people still use and have floppy drives you can make a boot cd but if your in some earlier safe mode windows oses they don’t recognize cd dvd drive in safe mode. and yes their are thousands- millions of user out their still using older windows oses from 2000 pro all the way down to nt 4.0 maybe lower.and other older oses too not just the current new oses. >windows XP, mac X and all the new linux varities
HP only
oh I suppose I could have used delpart to just delete the partion repartition and reinstall using the usb cd-rw drive. but it wasn’t my laptop and didn’t want the headache of it coming back so I made sure it was wiped clean.a couple of 1 and zero write passes plus formatting each in between pass.
HP only
oh and considering it was a real early laptop a 266 mhz system it didn’t have usb boot options.or alternative boot options. but the boot floppy and usb additions on the floppy gave it all it needed to work correctly.also if you had a large enough usb jump drive you should be able to partition it put the system boot info from the floppy on one partition .and the install cd on the other.
Thanks Mr. Stolarz
I could not find this on Symantec Ghost web site. This is the software we use to create our image and I need to create a boot usb. Help.
Thanks
HP only
I am really interested if you develop the emulation package,
I will check out your website.
This stupid program identified my 300 gig external NTFS drive as the thumb drive and formatted it as FAT32. It listed my thumb drive as a “Maxtor”, which is the brand of my external so I selected the other drive without looking at the mbyte count. That’s 300 gigs worth of backups corrupted. That will teach me to be more careful when formatting usb devices.
THIS DID NOT WORK!!
I used a 512 MB Tansend and a 1 GB EagleTec USB key. I used the HP utility and fromated both of them in FAT, FAT32 and NTFS. When in FAT/FAT32 it asked to replace the disk and hit any key to boot. When in NTFS it said missing NTLDR. I also tried using UltraISO and extracted an ISO of a bootable file (norton ghost) to the USB key which still had system files on, but still the same problem. So what did I miss?
You could find interesting my FAQs for USB sticks booting:
http://home.graffiti.net/jaclaz:graffiti.net/Projects/USB/USBfaqs.html
My howto:
http://home.graffiti.net/jaclaz:graffiti.net/Projects/USB/USBstick.html
And latest developments on the 911 CD Forum:
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=15837&st=6
I used the hp utility on a pony 1gig. I checked format it fat32 and checked the option to use files from a win98 boot floppy. Works good so far. I hit f12 for the boot menu on my Dell, and choose boot to usb storage device.
GREAt! THIS Was great ! my flash drive worked first go! Thanx mate! Ur a legend!
CeZ
Melbourne, Australia
Best advice I have had all week. The HP tool came with an error message when I left the drive label blank. When I filled it in, it worked like a dream.
My Puppy Linux now boot with my Lexar Jumpdrive like lightning, so to speak
and with plenty of space left for my other files.
Lots of thanks, Damien.
Mons, London
SWEET!! Got a LexarMedia Jumpdrive that was dead, till I fixed it with this app, thanx Damien!
sda
Related to HP Windows utility: http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/hpcpqdt/us/download/20306.html
As far as I know it can format USB memory keys and also USB disk drives.
To make an USB device bootable you MUST choose FAT or FAT 32 and then copy on the USB device the boot sector and the DOS boot files. Windows 2000/XP are NOT supported as boot operating system.
The HP utility automatically write a standard bootsector on the USB device and ask for the DOS boot files either from a floppy (the best of course is the windows 98 boot disk) or from a directory on your PC.
List of DOS Bootfiles needed into your directory:
MUST:
COMMAND.COM
IO.SYS
MSDOS.SYS
Optional:
EMM386.EXE
HIMEM.SYS
ANSI.SYS
RAMDRIVE.SYS
CHOICE.COM
…
MSCDEX.EXE
OAKCDROM.SYS
…
You MUST know
1- The PC MUST have USB BIOS Support
2- How to set CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT
3- When booted the USB disk gets the drive letter C:
Optionally you can use MS-DOS to fdisk and format /S the USB disk with standard MS-DOS commands. In this case the USB device get the first free letter (after the internal disks)
Frapster,I need your help.Can’t copy the files to the drive,says not formatted butI cant format it .Pls help.
Bones, download the HP format utility:
ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/softpaq/sp27001-27500/SP27213.exe
Works great on a 1G Sandisk Cruzer.
I have a Sony (PCG-GRV670),
Can I make this Notebook usb drive bootable ?
I’m hoping someone has experience with this notebook.
The link to the HP utility goes nowhere now. Any idea where it’s moved to or where else I can get a copy of the ultiliy?
Dead Link, I agree that the http URL is dead link indeed.
Kaks posted the URL for ftp transfer and it is still valide.
Here: ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/softpaq/sp27001-27500/SP27213.exe
Worked for me a few seconds ago.
Thanks Kaks
Running Netscape 7.2, the Flash advertisemenr blocks the first paragraph of your information. At first, I thought this was to force me to “click” on it yo make it disappear, but then that didn’t work.
A true annoyance.
For Win OS
First you need download couple utilities :
1. HP bootable flash utility:
http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/hpcpqdt/us/download/20306.html
2. NTFS for DOS:
http://www.datapol.de/dpe/freeware/
Steps to make USB thumbdrive bootable and ability read\write to NTFS partition:
1. Format diskette using xp Select FAT as “file system” and check “create an MS-DOS Startup disk” under “format options”
2. Connect your USB thumbdrive to USB port on your computer
3. Using “HP USB Disk storage Tool” format your USB Drive select FAT as File system and check “create a DOS startup disk” option, “Using DOS system files located at:” the diskette created in step 1.
4. Change your bios to boot from USB first choice then verify that you can boot from your USB drive.
5. Using NTFS 4 DOS utility Click on “Create NTFS capable boot foloppy”. Select the Drive letter correspond to your USB drive and click Next then Next on the following screen.
6. If successfull you end-up with Emergency bootable USB drive that can read\write to NTFS partition.
…
LOL Anonymous don’t try to copy and paste without Reading, huh ? What you pasted here is already said by rezak on 22-August-2005 (see above).
The HP Util didn’t work for my Kingston 2.0 512MB , hmm… which Format is needed ? FAT16 or FAT32 ?
For all of those getting the “write protect” error. When the HP utility loads it creates a directory on your C drive. If you open the command prompt and cd to that directory, you will see two executables. One is the Gui menu and hpusbf is a command prompt menu. Type in hpusbf and it will show you the USB stick two ways, and the format of the command. Use the drive letter and run the utility from the command line and you will not get the “write protect’ error.
My files on my 2 GB mini sandisk cruzer were corrupted and so I reformated the thumbdrive. Now the drive icon appears but when I try to access it in any way, the error message pops up saying that I need to insert a disk into the drive. Apparently the computer isn’t recognizing it. Any thoughts as to what I can do?
Try http://h18000.www1.hp.com/support/files/serveroptions/us/locate/69_6073.html
this seems to be where it has moved
Looking for the HP Disk Storage Format Tool? Search in Google for “HP Disk Storage Format Tool” and view the cached webpage you can download the program from there.
I have a jump drive that somehow is now write protected, how can I fix this?
Thx this helped greatly. Why can’t Microsoft release something like this.
I used the link Damien Stolarz provided
http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/hpcpqdt/us/download/20306.html
and it worked like a trooper.
I tried it on both 1.1 and 2.0 usb and on a Scandisk 32MB witha ZiOl
Microtech CF reader/writer with no issues
also I tried it on a Flash Voyeger from corsair memory products with
no issue.
PLEASE NOTE is you use the make floppy drive boot option it will repartition the flash to 1.44mb so it is treated as a boot floopy
I don’t know what happens to the rest of the space.
Good website!
i tryed it and it satrted to work but no windows reads my flash disk as it is a genric drive and i cant access it
i have a sandisk cruzer micro 512
please somebody help……………………….
nbhighfive@hotmail.com
Which options did you choose when installing?
Hey i used the seagate usb utility and the ntfs4dos and it wworked have a good usb drive that has ghost , bootable with freedos and images on it. it is a 6 gb seagate usb drive. first i loaded the ntfs4dos then i ran the setup which formated it for fat32 next i copied the dos files it had placed on the drive and then used the segate utility to create a bootdisk on my 6 gb drive. then copied over ghost exceutible and the images booted and it worked
i have a joybee 150 mp3 (flash memory) 128mb and it works, but you got to find the install dir and extract 2 compressed folder, they contain the boot files you need, there are 2 folders, you can use one or the other
Is the hp bootable flash utility, unix based?
I have a Dell D400 without any CD-ROM, I whant to install windows xp via my bootable USB drive, the issue is how to combine an windows xp image on the USB device, anyone who may have an idea of how this could work??
very informative issue solved. thanks to all