Bootable USB flash options
I’ve begun searching for a solution to the following: I want multiple bootable partitions on a USB flash drive.
Notes:
- Apparently Windows will only see one partition without hacks.
- If I can’t get around the above, the Windows/FAT32 partition needs to be the main visible one.
- Going to need some sort of boot loader to pick the OS.
- Planning to put this on a 16GB stick. Don’t want to use up too much space with OS clutter.
UPDATE: 05/17/11
I’ve played around with some different options and settled on a single FAT32 partition with Slax/syslinux offering up a few different OS choices. I’ve added an ophcrack image, a BartPE image, and a TAILS image (runs off Debian Live). Everything is working mostly how I want it to except I’ve run into a bit of a snag with some linux distros. You can move the kernel and intird files around all you want (as long as you update slax.cfg) but they’re very picky about their squashfs files. If the name of a squashfs file from one distro to another is the same you can’t use more than one. I’ve dug around a bit and can’t find a way around that for now.