How to boot multiple Operating Systems from a single bootable USB drive.

[Anindya1989]

YUMI (Your Universal Multiboot Installer) can be used to create a Multiboot USB Flash Drive containing multiple operating systems, antivirus utilities, disc cloning, diagnostic tools, and more. YUMI uses syslinux to boot extracted distributions stored on the USB device, and reverts to using grub to Boot Multiple ISO files from USB, if necessary.

Aside from a few distributions, all files are stored within the Multiboot folder, making for a nicely organized Multiboot Drive that can still be used for other storage purposes.

Creating a YUMI Multiboot MultiSystem

YUMI works much like Universal USB Installer, except it can be used to install more than one distribution to run from your USB. Distributions can also be uninstalled using the same tool!

YUMI's Main Multiboot Boot Menu

How to Create a MultiBoot USB Flash Drive

1. Run YUMI-0.0.3.0.exe (attached below) following the onscreen instructions

2. Run the tool again to Add More ISOs/Distributions to your Drive

3. Restart your PC setting it to boot from the USB device

4. Select a distribution to Boot from the Menu and enjoy!

That's all there is to it. You should now be booting your favorite distributions from your custom Multi-Boot USB device!

VERY IMPORTANT: Windows Vista or 7 Installers will cause Ubuntu or any remix based on Ubuntu (I.E. Linux Mint) to hang during boot. A quick fix is to temporarily rename the Windows SOURCES folder found at the root of the USB device.

Basic Essentials to create a MultiSystem Bootable USB Drive

• Fat32 Formatted USB Flash or USB Hard Drive

• PC that can boot from USB

• Windows XP/Vista/7 host to create the Bootable USB

• YUMI-0.0.3.0.exe

• Your selection of ISO Files

Known Issues

When installing Windows 7 or Vista from USB, you must unplug the USB device before the first restart, otherwise you will receive an error stating:

"windows setup could not configure windows to run on this computer's hardware"

Troubleshooting Boot Errors: While trying to run an ISO from USB, If you get a Boot error saying:

Error 60: File for drive emulation must be in one contiguous disk area

You'll need to defragment your ISO using one of the following tools:

contig – Command line tool to defragment ISO files.

wincontig – GUI tool to defragment ISO files.

[Die2mrw007]

+3 andy for this awesome share btw, can this tool b used for win xp installation?

[Anindya1989]

+3 andy for this awesome share

btw, can this tool b used for win xp installation?

No it starts from win vista.

[farazejaz]

+1 awesome dude can i use my flash drive to boot ubuntu 10.10? as with windows 7 i cannot boot from hdd strange issue and never solved it coz i can have ubuntu 10.04 in vmware but will it install on flash drive ?

[Guest amarjit_rsingh]

+1, nice tutorial

[Anindya1989]

+1 awesome dude can i use my flash drive to boot ubuntu 10.10?

as with windows 7 i cannot boot from hdd strange issue and never solved it coz i can have ubuntu 10.04 in vmware but will it install on flash drive ?

Yes you can boot both win 7 and ubuntu 10.10 with this but you must boot win 7 first. If you want to install Ubuntu first then just rename the Sources folder in win 7 installation files on the pen drive. The sources folder causes a conflict while installing ubuntu and all other ubuntu derivatives.