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I have a portable 1 TB hard disk drive. It contain various folders and it also contain the setup for windows 7 x86 and x64. I also plan to download Ubuntu and backtract later. I also have other files on this drive.

I want to make the hard disk bootable so that I can install any OS that I want through USB. I will put installation files in folders for e.g Windows 7 x86 folder, Windows 7 x64 and Backtract folder.

When I boot the hard drive, a menu should appear and ask me with OS I want to install.

I know this can be done by burning the individual OS to different DVD and then boot from DVD but its not what I want to achieve here.

Dave
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user249882
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  • I can conceivably think of a program that runs first and then links itself to the various setups. Assuming the setups aren't hardlinked to the media, it shouldn't be a (big) problem. – Doktoro Reichard Aug 30 '13 at 07:23
  • That exactly want i am looking for....but what you mean by hardlinked – user249882 Aug 30 '13 at 07:58
  • Consider that the OS installation disks are usually made to boot from a single drive, so you first need to trick the underlying system with that program. I know of some utilities that "shrink" or allow you to make your own Windows installation disk, but I've never heard of one that allowed to do this for multiple. If a program existed that, at boot, allowed you to choose an ISO file to boot from, that would be an acceptable solution to your problem. – Doktoro Reichard Aug 30 '13 at 08:31
  • With a quick search, maybe [unetbootin](http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/) ([SU link](http://superuser.com/questions/66948/how-do-i-place-a-bootable-iso-on-a-usb-drive)) may be what you were looking for, although I don't know if it allows to dual-boot. – Doktoro Reichard Aug 30 '13 at 08:37
  • Unetbootin reformat the HDD as far as i know but i want a solution that don't force reformat as i have other dta on it – user249882 Aug 30 '13 at 08:44
  • The other solution I could find was to use a bootloader like GRUB and then boot from it the ISO files, as described on [this](http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1549847) – Doktoro Reichard Aug 30 '13 at 08:47

1 Answers1

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Try using YUMI, or Sardu.

I have been using them for quite a while now, (specially Sardu, I use it almost everyday since 2011)

ChrisF
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Mike
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