How do you create a bootable partition on a USB drive?

Question

I have a bootable ISO designed to be burned to a double-layer DVD. I don't have a double layer DVD burner, so I would like to stick the ISO image on a 50 GB partition on a USB hard drive I have. How do I get the boot info onto the hard drive?

Attempt 1:

1. booted into Ubuntu 9.04 LiveCD
2. deleted the partition on my existing USB hard drive
3. sudo dd if=/path/to/image.iso of=/dev/MyUSB
4. booted to USB drive
5. error: Error Loading OS

Atempt 2:

1. booted into Ubuntu 9.04 LiveCD
2. deleted the partition on my existing USB hard drive
3. sudo mkdosfs -I -v -n iPC /dev/MyUSB
4. sudo syslinux /dev/MyUSB
5. sudo dd if=/path/to/image.iso of=/dev/MyUSB
6. booted to USB drive
7. error: Selected boot device not available - strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility

Answer 1

The first thing required is -- your system should be able to boot from USB -- many older ones can't.

Then, you could use the dd utility from a unix installation (or Ubuntu LiveCD).

dd if=/path/to/image.iso of=/dev/YourUSB

This will low-level copy the ISO to your USB.
Of course, the ISO has to fit into the USB :-)

Couple of more references,

Using DSL distribution -- Creating a bootable USB from an iso.
And, Using Ubuntu 9.04

I think the syslinux step is missed in my description, which is what caused your problem.

---

On Windows there used to be Daemon Tools -- don't know if that is free today (think it was sometime).

Answer 2

I have followed this article to do exactly what you want: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2041234,00.asp

Answer 3

I've had success using WinGrub on a machine that only had net access. (No bootable usb, broken cd drive.) The site has changed since then: https://gna.org/projects/grub4dos/.

I don't have the details any more, but I was able to boot GParted off of a USB key on that old broken machine. You can also use it to boot ISO images. You may not even need WinGrub if you have GRUB on your machine already.