Is it possible to create a multi-OS installer SSD?

[Antoine Kamarovszki]

> purchase a 64gb SSD

> split it into 3 or 4 equal partitions

> put different windows installers on each partitions (such as Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10...etc)

> make all of those partitions bootable

> be able to select which windows I want to install when booting from that drive

 

Is this possible? If so, how do I make each partition bootable? So that Windows will be able to install itself and not just see it as a storage drive

[chiller15]

Yes, usually Windows is clever enough to detect it's own OS on another drive and amend the bootloader accordingly. Or installing the oldest OS first and working your way through to the newest if an older OS such as 7 cannot detect the newer OS such as 10.

 

Also, a 64GB drive is not large enough. a 64GB drive will likely have something like 56GB usable. Windows itself wants about 20GB just for the OS. I'd recommend a larger SSD.

[Antoine Kamarovszki]

Just now, chiller15 said:

Yes, usually Windows is clever enough to detect it's own OS on another drive and amend the bootloader accordingly. Or installing the oldest OS first and working your way through to the newest if an older OS such as 7 cannot detect the newer OS such as 10.

 

Also, a 64GB drive is not large enough. a 64GB drive will likely have something like 56GB usable. Windows itself wants about 20GB just for the OS. I'd recommend a larger SSD.

Hmm, but when I put Windows on USB to install it, it usually just takes 4-5 GB max

[mr moose]

I would get a removable drive dock, and get one drive for each OS.  That way if your drive corrupts or gets a virus/malware you still have the other OS's ready to go.  2.5" ssd's are nothing to keep in a draw or beside the PC.

[WkdPaul]

5 minutes ago, chiller15 said:

Yes, usually Windows is clever enough to detect it's own OS on another drive and amend the bootloader accordingly. Or installing the oldest OS first and working your way through to the newest if an older OS such as 7 cannot detect the newer OS such as 10.

 

Also, a 64GB drive is not large enough. a 64GB drive will likely have something like 56GB usable. Windows itself wants about 20GB just for the OS. I'd recommend a larger SSD.

and @IntMD

He's talking about having multiple INSTALLER, not bootable Windows installs

 

 

@Antoine Kamarovszki I use Easy2Boot, you can simply drag-and-drop ISO files in the correct directory after the USB drive is setup ;

http://www.easy2boot.com/

Edited November 19, 2018 by wkdpaul

[IntMD]

Just now, Antoine Kamarovszki said:

Hmm, but when I put Windows on USB to install it, it usually just takes 4-5 GB max

Not once it is installed on the system, it won't be. Below is for a fresh install and probably for the original Win 10, not sure how big it would go with the current version.

 

[IntMD]

2 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

and @IntMD

He's talking about having multiple INSTALLER, not bootable Windows installs

 

Yeah, kinda see what you mean... just the below was... confusing

 

13 minutes ago, Antoine Kamarovszki said:

> make all of those partitions bootable

 

 

[MCManiac52]

Easy2Boot is the way to go. I've a 2TB hard drive for work, with 1TB of bitlocker secure space for customer backups, 900GB for general data, and then 100GB for Easy2Boot so I can have any images I might need for customers.

[paddy-stone]

10 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

and @IntMD

He's talking about having multiple INSTALLER, not bootable Windows installs

 

 

@Antoine Kamarovszki I use Easy2Boot, you can simply drag-and-drop ISO files in the correct directory after the USB drive is setup ;

http://www.easy2boot.com/

Yeah I use YUMI, keep a ton of OS's installers and bootable tools like gparted on there for those "just in case" times. Will check out easy2boot though, always good to have options

 

[MCManiac52]

3 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

Yeah I use YUMI, keep a ton of OS's installers and bootable tools like gparted on there for those "just in case" times. Will check out easy2boot though, always good to have options

 

When first creating my drive I tried YUMI and was never able to get it to work properly. Easy2Boot is incredibly easy to use though, highly recommend it

[WkdPaul]

1 minute ago, paddy-stone said:

Yeah I use YUMI, keep a ton of OS's installers and bootable tools like gparted on there for those "just in case" times. Will check out easy2boot though, always good to have options

 

Was also using YUMI, but I switched to E2B when I had problem with my W7 ISO ... for some reason it wouldn't work after I moved to my 64GB USB drive, then I thought of putting it by itself on a 8GB drive but it wouldn't work either, not sure if it was the YUMI version or not since I didn't look too much into it.

 

A friend had been using E2B for a while, so I decided to try it and haven't looked back since!

[Guest]

That may work but just for EFI bioses I think, that wouldn't be possible on legacy because when you flash an .iso to an usb the bootloader is installed just once in the MBR for each OS

Also when you flash an iso usually you don't do that on partitions so you would have to format the partitions in FAT32 extract the iso manually for each partition, that should do the trick. On my bios especially when multiple EFI binaries are found on a single disk they appear as "DISK1_PARTITIONX"

Edited November 19, 2018 by Guest

[paddy-stone]

2 minutes ago, MCManiac52 said:

When first creating my drive I tried YUMI and was never able to get it to work properly. Easy2Boot is incredibly easy to use though, highly recommend it

 

 

1 minute ago, wkdpaul said:

Was also using YUMI, but I switched to E2B when I had problem with my W7 ISO ... for some reason it wouldn't work after I moved to my 64GB USB drive, then I thought of putting it by itself on a 8GB drive but it wouldn't work either, not sure if it was the YUMI version or not since I didn't look too much into it.

 

A friend had been using E2B for a while, so I decided to try it and haven't looked back since!

 

Yeah it can be a pain sometimes, I only generally maintain it with the latest version or 2 of each OS I like, like Ubuntu for example. Other than that I keep tools more than anything, and check the drive periodically to make sure it still works.

I will definitely give easy2boot a go, might be useful to have a HDD that's bootable to a windows/ubuntu image rather than a live disk... might have a play around with the VHD too for a few of my VMs. The choices seem a lot more useful than just live builds or installers.

 

[WkdPaul]

@paddy-stone I love the drag-and-drop nature of E2B, you can easily create the directory structure you want and the menu setup can easily be edited to suit your need and preferences. You'll see when you'll try it, and it's much more flexible than YUMI.

[chiller15]

47 minutes ago, Antoine Kamarovszki said:

Hmm, but when I put Windows on USB to install it, it usually just takes 4-5 GB max

 

43 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

and @IntMD

He's talking about having multiple INSTALLER, not bootable Windows installs

 

 

@Antoine Kamarovszki I use Easy2Boot, you can simply drag-and-drop ISO files in the correct directory after the USB drive is setup ;

http://www.easy2boot.com/

My bad, it's early on a Monday morning!

[WkdPaul]

28 minutes ago, Lukyp said:

That may work but just for EFI bioses I think, that wouldn't be possible on legacy because when you flash an .iso to an usb the bootloader is installed just once in the MBR for each OS

Also when you flash an iso usually you don't do that on partitions so you would have to format the partitions in FAT32 extract the iso manually for each partition, that should do the trick. On my bios especially when multiple EFI binaries are found on a single disk they appear as "DISK1_PARTITIONX"

That's why @paddy-stone @MCManiac52 and I are recommending USB multiboot solutions like Easy2Boot and YUMI

[mr moose]

7 minutes ago, chiller15 said:

 

My bad, it's early on a Monday morning!

I read it the same way, it's late Monday night here.  I have no excuse.