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As far as I know (and please correct me if I'm wrong) when creating a bootable flash drive, all information on the drive is erased. Will the following create a problem?

  1. Adding files after the bootable flash drive is created

  2. Moving all of the bootable flash drive files to one folder (and returning them to their original location when I have to boot from it)

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  • Making a flash drive bootable does not necessarily have to erase the drive, it depends on how you are making it bootable and on what sort of file system it currently has installed.
    – Harry Johnston
    Feb 28, 2013 at 2:04

3 Answers 3

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In most cases, as long as there is enough space both of those scenarios should work alright. A bootable flash drive still has a normal filesystem and if its a writable filesystem like FAT32, NTFS or EXT, it would let you copy files in.

While the bootloader would look for specific files by location (and this should work), moving the files back and forth might mess with permissions.

It would be simpler to add the files to their own folder, within the file system hierachy of whatever OS it uses IMO, but taking into account these considerations, this should work

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  • But that would depend on how the bootable image was created. If it was a block level copy of a CD/ISO, I think it would be a read-only file system.
    – Bob
    Feb 27, 2013 at 11:59
  • edited to reflect that
    – Journeyman Geek ♦
    Feb 27, 2013 at 12:14
  • +1 Thanks. It sounds from your answer like a bootable drive is like any other, except it has special files. If so, why would there be a special file type as iso, and iso burning software, or the Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool? We could simply have files and copy them onto the flash drive.
    – ispiro
    Feb 27, 2013 at 13:39
  • The USB/DVD download tool just automates the process of creating a bootable drive partition (with diskpart), formatting it to NTFS and flipping the bootable flag on the drive, and extracting and copying over the install files.
    – Journeyman Geek ♦
    Feb 27, 2013 at 14:08
  • Note that commenting on an answer doesn't inform the question-asker of that comment, only the answerer (unless specified by @name).
    – ispiro
    Feb 27, 2013 at 17:43
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Deferentially it will create the problem actually system will not copy the hidden system file from flash drive to your system
so you have to change the option from Tool-> folder Option and in that show system files and then it will show you at that time you can copy but I am not pretty sure about that It will work like a Bootable Flash drive.

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I tried to copy files to a USB drive that was setup as a bootable one for Windows 10. Everytime I created a folder and copied some file into it, they were removed after unplugging the drive. Only files in the main folder were kept between reconnecting the USB drive.

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