Create a Bootable Windows or Linux USB Drive From Your ISO Image

Need to make a bootable USB drive and use it as an operating system installation disk or a recovery drive? Just copy the files inside your ISO images to USB drive and it won't work. The USB drive's data partition needs to be made bootable, for one thing.

There is no built-in tool in Windows that allows you to achieve this. Thankfully, the freeware ISO2Disc make it easy to create a bootable USB drive from your Windows or Linux-based ISO images. Here's how.

Step 1: Download and Install ISO2Disc

Just go to its official website http://www.top-password.com/iso2disc.html and click on the Download button. The downloaded file is about 1.1Mb in size. After you've downloaded it, double-click on the ISO2DiscSetup.exe file to install it on your computer.

Step 2: Start the ISO2Disc Application

After installing, launch the ISO2Disc application. Click on Browse to locate your CD image that needs to be written onto your USB drive. This image can be almost any bootable CD image, such as Windows 10/8/7/Vista Installation image, WinPE, BartPE, Ubuntu Live CD, Debian, Linux Mint, Puppy Linux, Avira Rescue CD, GParted Live CD, Ultimate Boot CD, Hiren’s Boot CD, Trinity Rescue Kit, System Rescue CD, Offline NT Password & Registry Editor, Ophcrack, PCLoginNow, SystemRescueCd, UBCD4Win, etc.

Check the "Burn to USB Flash Drive" option. With your USB drive plugged in, the USB drive should be listed. Set your desired partition style to MBR (recommended) or GPT.

Step 3: Burn ISO Image to USB

Click on Start Burn, the program will begin to format your USB drive, make the partition to be bootable, extract the contents of your ISO image to your USB drive. This will take a few minutes, fully depend on the file size of your CD image.

Once the burning process is complete, you should see a popup box that says "Burn Finished". You can then disconnect your USB drive and plug it into your target computer for USB booting. Of course, you need to change the boot sequence in the BIOS to get the machine to boot from USB drive prior to local hard drive. It's that simple!