How do I create bootable USB flash for Ghost 15?

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1

I want to be able to boot from a flash/thumb drive in a USB port into Ghost 15 to do an emergency system recovery in the event that the system will not boot normally into Windows 7 with my netbook.  I can not carry any external CD drive while away from home and must use the flash drive instead.  Can you give me specific, detailed instructions about how to make a bootable flash to start Ghost 15?   Many thanks for your help!  This will be a roadwarrior's safety net.

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Part 2 of that article is not necessary at all.

Diskpart will give the flash drive the proper nt60 boot sector already.

 

I would also use FAT32 instead of NTFS. You don't need it for such a small drive and without the file system overhead and reserved space it's going to work a little faster.

 

  • list disk, to find the drive number of your usb stick.
  • select disk #, to select the usb disk (put the number you found in the previous step in place of the # – be absolutely certain you have the right number!)
  • clean
  • create partition primary
  • select partition 1
  • active
  • format fs=fat32
  • assign
  • exit

Remove and replace the flash drive and then copy the contents of the Ghost SRD onto it.

 

Thanks to Brian_K for the info.

 

Dave

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BTW-  Since you mentioned it was a netbook, I'll tell you what I do with mine.

 

I have a EEE that I started with a bootable flash drive but I figured It was just something else to carry.

I already had a 16GB SDHC card in the netbook so I made that bootable instead and started running Ghost from it and also keeping an image on it.

 

Later, I got tired of all the extra folders on the card and the fact that it could only boot Ghost so I made the card bootable with Grub.  Using Grub I can boot the Ghost ISO directly so I don't have all those folders littering my drive and I can boot several other ISO's as well, a windows PE disk I made and a partition wizzard ISO.  I also can have it boot to DOS and be able to use some of my old DOS tools and programs.  It was nice how I was able to use some of the older tools I have purchased in the past and get a second life out of them without having to spend a lot of money on a netbook.

 

Dave

4

 

DaveH wrote:

Part 2 of that article is not necessary at all.

Diskpart will give the flash drive the proper nt60 boot sector already.

 

 

Is this because of the command "active"?

 

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Thank you very much, gentlemen!  I appreciate your time, trouble and skilled knowledge very much.  I've followed both suggestions and will test them tonight.  Dynamite!

6

speechfixer,

 

Just one suggestion to Dave's post.

 

format fs=fat32 quick

 

At least you won't grow old waiting for the format to finish.


7
redk9258 wrote:

 

 

Is this because of the command "active"?

 

 

I'm not sure if it's from making it active or just from making a primary on a blank drive but it always ends up with the nt60 boot sector when done in Vista or Windows 7.

 

The only time I had to use bootsect.exe was changing the boot sector back to nt52.

If you ever want to do the same thing with an XP/2000 based PE you need a nt52 boot sector.

nt52 boots NTLDR (XP/2000)

nt60 boots bootmgr (vista/Win7)

 

I guess by default when you make a bootable drive the OS makes it a compatable boot sector to the OS that was used.

Dave

 

 

8

Another reason to note that bootsect.exe isn't needed is because a lot of people might not have it.

You'll notice that it is on the installation DVD's in the "boot" folder, but it doesn't get copied to the system when it's installed.

If you search your system you won't find it.

People who don't have retail disks and were only given a "recovery" disk might not think they have it.

 

It's actually on the system but you need to create a system recovery disk to be able to get it.

Or you need to know how to open the Winre.wim file and pull it out of the system32 folder (7-zip)

 

Beats me why it never got installed.

 

 

9

I want to be able to boot from a flash/thumb drive in a USB port into Ghost 15 to do an emergency system recovery in the event that the system will not boot normally into Windows 7 with my netbook.  I can not carry any external CD drive while away from home and must use the flash drive instead.  Can you give me specific, detailed instructions about how to make a bootable flash to start Ghost 15?   Many thanks for your help!  This will be a roadwarrior's safety net.