Replacing Rescue CDs with USB Keys?

Dan asks: "For several years now I have been working on the ultimate rescue CD, being able to load many disk images, Windows XP PE, all from CDROM while having a nice graphical menu as the main interface during bootup (I would post a nice screenshot, but I like my bandwidth) and I mainly used the ISOLINUX bootloader. I recently received a SanDisk Mini Cruzer 256 USB 2.0 keychain drive, and I am really eager to put some sort of multi booting system on my USB key drive to achieve the same goal. I haven't seen anyone having any success with ISOLINUX or something similar, but the drive is bootable for sure. I have exhausted all options, I searched, I posted on many forums, I never get any useful replies. Since Slashdot readers mostly share the same interests, I am hoping you guys can help me out!" How would yo u configure a USB Key drive to boot multiple operating systems?

Comments

You lose compatibility

[TheRealMindChild]

With the advent of bootable CDs, everyone cried "Throw away the floppy, you dont need it for anything!", that is until they came across their mothers busted 10 year old packard bell. Now you propose to do the same thing to cds with the promise of a usb key. Seeing that your computer not only needs to support USB AND be able to boot from USB. The range of computers you can do this is MUCH less then that which can boot from a cdrom which is MUCH LESS then the computers that can boot from floppies.

Re:You lose compatibility

[SpaceLifeForm]

Sorry, but if your idea of an uber-machine is to be sans floppy, then all you/they really want is a network
computer/appliance - not a true general purpose machine. The general public has no idea why they
would want a floppy because they rarely if ever
use a floppy.

But the reality is, they really
are damn handy. Where else can you take a *writable and bootable medium* (WBM)
and boot it on machine 'A', modify files on the
same WBM on 'A', then boot the same WBM on
machine 'B', and have it self-diagnose/repair on machine 'B', writing results to said WBM, and then
removing the WBM from 'B', booting same WBM on machine 'A', and reviewing
diagnostic results on said WBM? All in 5 minutes or less?

Intriguing, but not widely supported

[lambent]

The posts so far have been right on the money: boot from usb device, while several years old, is not as common as we would like it to be.

Perhaps the best you can hope for (certainly the easiest) is to make a linux bootable diskette, load USB drivers from there, then mount the usb-drive, and load a new kernel from that. Two stage boot.

floppy still has a use

[Nerdy]

My raid card comes with the drivers on a floppy. Until I figure out how to tell windows xp installation to load them from a cd or hard drive, I have to use the floppy when I reinstall.

Smart BootManager

[Cecil]

Smart BootManager is a personal favourite bootloader for me. My favourite feature is probably useless for what you intend to do, but if you stick it on a floppy, it will let you boot from the CDROM of a computer ancient enough that it doesn't normally support CDROM booting. This has saved me from pulling out my hair numerous times to boot, say, a Windows install CD, or a Debian install CD, or whatever you may need to install that is too big to fit on a disk or USB drive.

It has a nice asciigraphic menu, is completely runtime-configurable, and fits in 30kB. Really impressive, in my opinion. If you can partition your USB drive in a way that it understands, it should be able to do what you want.