As technology progresses, PC’s are beginning to be produced which don’t have an optical drive for reading CD’s or DVD’s. While this leads to smaller and neater looking PC’s, it does cause a few problems. Most major software vendors can now supply software packages as downloads rather than on a physical disk, and there are applications for Windows that can emulate a CD drive, but what about for disks you need to boot off of? The windows emulation tools would be useless for these, what is needed is a USB memory key that can be booted off of to enable you to install an operating system or other software.

Thankfully, this is entirely possible using a free Windows application and an ordinary USB memory key.

You will need:

  • A USB memory key (at least 1GB for a CD equivalent)
  • A disk image file (such as an ISO file)
  • An internet connection
  • A PC running Microsoft WIndows

Method:

Insert your USB memory key and ensure that it’s recognised as a disk within Windows (you may need to format it before it appears).

Head over to Sourceforge and download the “UNetbootin” application.  Once downloaded, run the downloaded file, you’ll see the following window:

If you’re looking to create a bootable USB disk to install linux, then you can select the distribution and version on this screen, but in this walkthrough we’ll assume you’ve already downloaded your disk image file, this being the case; select the “Diskimage” button as shown below:

Now, select the “…” button to choose your disk image file from your hard disk:

Once selected, make sure that the appropriate USB stick is selected at the bottom of the UNetbootin window, and then click “OK.  UNetbootin will then create the bootable USB disk:

Once completed, you’ll be presented with the following screen:

At this point your USB stick is ready to boot from, you can either reboot using the “Reboot Now” button, or exit and use your USB key at a later date.  Simply insert the USB into the desired machine and turn it on, your PC should then boot from the USB key as if it were a CD or DVD.

Enjoy!