can i partition a USB stick and have a bootable image on one part?

[giantbucket]

so, let's say i have an 8G USB stick, and i have some small programs that can be run live from USB without having to go into Windows. can i partition the USB stick into a few pieces, and put one bootable image on one, another bootable image on another (or not), and plain data files like drivers on another partition?

so, can i have 1 bootable partition? how?
can i have 2 bootable partitions? how? would i need a GRUB menu?

 

[slingsrat]

I don't believe you can partition a USB Flash drive.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, giantbucket.

@slingsrat is correct. Unless you go with 3rd party tools there's no way to do that with Windows. However even with 3rd party tools Windows will be able to see only one of the partitions at a time. But this might be good enough if you make one of the partitions bootable and after that set the other one to be visible (since you don't need the bootable partition to be used by Windows). However this really sounds like a long shot and it might not work. Anyway here's a tutorial on how to partition a flash drive: http://www.wikihow.com/Partition-a-Thumb-Drive.

It would be easier to get a second USB flash drive.

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD

 

[TerryLaze]

You can make a usb bootable with a,or several look for YUMI, OS installation and just put any loose files you want into a directory,no need for partitioning.

 

[bogdansv]

You can make a usb bootable with a,or several look for YUMI, OS installation and just put any loose files you want into a directory,no need for partitioning.

This is mostly true for linux live images and if you have a large enough usb stick you can have one (as in only 1) windows boot image too. [as far as I can remember there were some issues with multiple windows "flavors" on a thumb drive]. And yes you would need a bootloader which YUMI does provide. It's not really partitioning because the images all reside on the same partition but it serves the same purpose.

 

[giantbucket]

i was thinking more along the lines of having smaller bootable programs that can do things WITHOUT having a host OS, like a partition manager or repair utilities, where traditionally each one is a bootable "item"

ideally, it would be nice to have the PC boot into a USB and then pop up a menu (like GRUB, i guess) where i can select what i want to boot into. and this would need to work on stuff as old as Win2k-ear hardware.

 

[bogdansv]

i was thinking more along the lines of having smaller bootable programs that can do things WITHOUT having a host OS, like a partition manager or repair utilities, where traditionally each one is a bootable "item"

ideally, it would be nice to have the PC boot into a USB and then pop up a menu (like GRUB, i guess) where i can select what i want to boot into. and this would need to work on stuff as old as Win2k-ear hardware.

Depending on what you put on it, TerryLaze's solution does just that. Also you can take a look at Hiren's Boot CD.

 

[TerryLaze]

Depending on what you put on it, TerryLaze's solution does just that. Also you can take a look at Hiren's Boot CD.

Hiren's and/or ultimate boot cd.

You can also download only what you need or want,as linux iso images,and put them on a usb with yumi by using the "unlisted iso" option,most stuff will run.