Multiple live CD ISO images on a single USB drive

Question

I am looking to create a USB flash drive that I can put multiple live CD ISO images on and select which boots from startup. The ideal candidate supports Linux and Windows-based ISO images, and is relatively simple. It also must have some reasonable process for adding and removing an ISO image from the drive/list.

Things that I'm not looking for in this specific question:

• UBCD4Win or other swiss-army knife live CDs. The point is to boot any one of multiple CDs, not to boot a (certainly useful) utility CD.
• Installing a single live CD to a USB drive. I'd like to have multiple ISO images, selectable at startup.

I don't have a specific purpose in mind, possibilties include a single drive with a Knoppix variant, Ubuntu desktop, UBCD4Win for DOS, the Offline NT Password Cracker, etc.

Flexible and easy to use are the name of the game!

Answer 1

This is an interesting question. I can see it being very useful to have a single USB "master" LiveCD, instead of having so many different DVDs and pen-drives scattered around.

There seem to be a number of different approaches to this, all of them doable:

• Mk-boot-usb: a Script to Create Multiple-Bootable USB Sticks
• Boot Multiple Distro from USB / Flash drive / Pendrive
• Booting multiple LiveCD's from a single USB stick

Answer 2

YUMI – Multiboot USB Creator (Windows) also allows you to do it. Once set up, all you have to do is put the ISO image file on the drive.