dual partition USB drive for Win10ISO and Surface Recovery Image?

[baydude]

I have a Sandisk Cruzer 64GB USB 2.0 thumb drive and I was wondering if it's possible to create 2 disk partitions and install some boot menu to allow me to choose either the Win10 ISO partition or Surface Book Recovery Image when I boot to USB in UEFI?

 

[Deepak]

Yes, partitioning a USB is possible. Formatting the USB in NTFS format first might be preferable. You'll need some additional third party tools like EaseUS partition manager to do it. These tools let you easily partition your drives. There are plenty of videos on YouTube to show you how to use these tools. Then next steps are pretty easy and straightforward. Burn the ISOs to the USB partitions (may be just copy-pasting the contents of the ISOs to the partitions might work). You may also take a look at this article at makeuseof:- http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-install-multiple-bootable-operating-systems-on-one-usb-stick/

After that you need to enable legacy boot menu by executing the following command in the command prompt with admin rights. This will enable the Windows 7 style grey-black boot menu which will detect the number of bootable partitions and let you chose one to boot into. You may boot from your USB and be able to select which partition you want to boot into.

1.) For enabling legacy boot menu:-
bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy

2.) For disabling it:-
bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy standard

After that plug your USB into your PC and on the OEM logo splash screen, see which key is to be used to access multiboot menu. It may be F12 but still. Or go into your PC?s BIOS setup by pressing F2 or Del. continuously till the OEM logo appears. There you can set the boot order as you wish. Move USB FDD/HDD or both above the SATA or whatever HDD your PC has, save this configuration and exit the BIOS setup. This will automatically detect your bootable USB and will let you boot into it first. Then the legacy boot menu will let you select which partition you want to boot into. That's it.

Tell me if the explanation isn't thorough or if something seems incorrect

 

[baydude]

Tried EaseUS and costs money and It says Windows would only recognize the primary partition if I create multiple partitions on a USB drive.
Tried YUMI and can't create a partition w/ the the Surface Book Recovery files because it's not an ISO and manually creating an ISO from the zip resulted in Yumi returning no configuration file found.
Copying the SB recovery files to the USB drive, then using YUMI to create Win10ISO, resulted in Win10ISO being the primary partition and no YUMI boot menu was loaded..

 

[Deepak]

Yes, a drive can have only one primary partition on which the boot manager is stored. This boot manager manages the number of OSs installed on a drive. So, you need to set one of your USB partitions as primary, burn one of the bootable ISOs to that partition and other ISO to the other logical partition. At this point your USB behaves as an actual hard drive. The boot manager on the USB's primary partition will check if you can boot into the other logical partition or not similar to how to use multiple OSs on a single hard drive.

EaseUS partition manager has a free edition also. Get it here:- http://download.cnet.com/EaseUS-Partition-Master-Free-Edition/3000-2248_4-10863346.html

 

[baydude]

I just split the 32gb to two 16gb partitions w/ EaseUS free edition and copied the Recovery Image files to the primary partition in drive D:

How would I copy or burn the WIN10 ISO to the other partition if Windows doesn't recognize it or a drive letter isn't assigned?

 

[Deepak]

It's a known issue that Windows doesn't recognize partitions of USB. It'll only recognize the primary one. Microsoft has long ignored this problem as not much people are interested in this issue. So, now the only option is to convert your USB into a USB HDD. USB HDD will behave as an external hard drive. According to this article, it's very simple. See this:- http://www.getusb.info/usb-hack-turn-a-usb-stick-into-a-hard-drive-or-local-disk/ Also check this out http://superuser.com/questions/142841/making-a-flash-drive-to-a-hard-drive After converting, you can partition it even using Windows' own Disk Management tool. Or EaseUS is better and can assign the drive letters to both partitions easily. Btw, are you doing this on your spare USB or your primary USB?

 

[baydude]

Yes I have many USB thumb drives and after spending so many hours trying to create 1 multiboot USB drive using EaseUS, Yumi, Easy2Boot, xboot, Rufus, I've come to the conclusion it's too difficult to do w/ the newer UEFI devices so gave up and just made two seperate drives.

 

[Deepak]

Next? Were you successful in burning both the bootable ISOs?

 

[baydude]

Next? Were you successful in burning both the bootable ISOs?

Yes.

 

[steve2926]

Easy2Boot can support multiple UEFI payloads by converting each one into a .imgPTN file.
If you have already have your two working USB flash drives, just install the MPI Tool kit from the E2B site and then drag-and-drop the USB flash drive Explorer icon (e.g. for U onto the MPI_FAT32 Desktop icon - this will make a .imgPTN file. Then copy it to your E2B USB drive (e.g. \_ISO\MAINMENU folder). Repeat for the other flash drive. (alternatively, drag-and-drop the ISO or zip file onto the MPI_FAT32 Desktop shortcut).

Now you need to 'switch-in' the partition image before you can UEFI-boot from it. There are various ways you can do this:
1. Run \_ISO\SWITCH_E2B.exe and double-click on the .imgPTN file
2. MBR-boot from a BIOS system (or a system with CSM mode enabled) and boot to the E2B Main menu - then select the required .imgPTN file.
3. Run \QEMU_MENU_TEST.cmd to run a small emulator and boot to the E2B Main menu and select the required .imgPTN file.

Once you have switched in the .imgPTN partition image, you can now UEFI-boot from the E2B drive.

To switch it back to 'E2B mode' run \e2b\SWITCH_E2B.exe - Restore E2B Partition(s), or boot it on a BIOS/CSM system to the CSM Menu and choose option 0.

There are several YouTube videos showing you how to do this.
Adding UEFI (.imgPTN) images :: Easy2Boot