How to create a multiboot USB drive

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One of the most useful things a user can have in his arsenal is a multiboot USB drive. When your computer boots from such a bootable USB drive or stick, it will present you with a boot menu and allow you to select a choice. Multibooting can be very useful for a number of occasions: repairing Windows and Linux installations, repairing the MBR and hard disk problems, testing hardware, making backups, trying out a new operating system and even securely erasing your data.  This tutorial will show you how to create a multiboot USB drive.
These are the things you will need to get started:

• A USB flash drive or a USB external hard drive. Capacity should be above 2GB, the larger it is the more options you have.
• (Optional) RMPrepUSB. This is a very useful tool to partition and format your USB drive. If your drive capacity is above 32GB, you will face problems using Windows to partition your drive as FAT32. RMPrepUSB can create FAT32 partitions up to 2TB.
• Software to create the multiboot USB. You have two options here. Xboot and MultiBootISOs USB Creator. Xboot is our first choice here as it has additional features such as QEMU emulation.
• ISO images of the tools and operating systems that you would like to include. Both Xboot and MultiBootISOs USB creator have a list of images that you can use. You should start with these and add your own selections later.
• You need to configure your BIOS settings to boot from USB. This is done by entering BIOS settings and changing the boot priority so that the first option is to boot from USB drive.
  

Now you are ready to start creating your multiboot USB drive:

• Start by partitioning and formatting the drive as FAT32 (NTFS will not work with some distributions). If you use RMPrepUSB as we recommend, then choose your drive, select syslinux as boot loader  and click on prepare drive. After going through some warnings, your drive will be ready. If you encounter an error then try using the clean option first.
  
  
• Run Xboot and either drag & drop ISO images on Xboot or use the File»Download option to download images that work with Xboot. When you drag & drop images, Xboot will automatically recognize them if they are on its list. If not, then try using a similar distribution (for example Linux Mint will work as Ubuntu) or use GRUB4DOS emulation. There are distributions that are not currently compatible with Xboot. In this case you should try using MultiBootISOs USB Creator, or ask one of the developers for support.
  
  
  Here is a list of recommended distributions and software to include:
  
  
  • A Linux distribution such as Ubuntu
  • Gparted (partition manager)
  • Kaspersky Antivirus Rescue Disk
  • Hiren's Boot CD (a wide collection of useful tools – add it using GRUB4DOS emulation)
  • ReDo Backup (backup and recovery)
  • Darik's Boot and Nuke (if you need to securely wipe your data)
  • MSDaRT or ERD (for Microsoft Windows recovery)
    
• After finishing with the selection of ISO images, click Create USB and Xboot will start creating the multiboot usb drive.
• When it's done you can test the installation with QEMU emulator.
• If everything has gone according to plan, reboot your machine and choose to boot from your USB drive. You will see a boot menu and you can then choose what you want to boot.
  

Congratulations! You have now created a multiboot usb drive.

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