There have been quite a few articles written about USB storage devices (USB Flash Drives). Recently, I set up a lab by cloning from an existing image on a server within the LAN. Since the machines in this lab do not have CD-ROM and floppy disk drives, I could only use USB. I searched for articles on how to do this but couldn’t find any. This process is actually very simple; you just need to download two tools: netboot54 and mkbt20, and follow these steps:
1. Use WinXP to create a bootable floppy disk by going to My Computer -> right-click on the floppy disk icon -> Format -> select Create Startup Disk
2. Format the USB disk to FAT format: go to My Computer -> right-click on the USB disk icon -> Format -> select FAT format (do not choose FAT32)
3. Extract mkbt20.zip you downloaded to C:mkbt and netboot54.zip to C:NetBoot (optional)
4. Open the command line: Start -> Run -> type cmd -> Enter
5. Change the current directory to C:mkbt
Insert the formatted floppy disk
type the command: mkbt –c a: bootsect.bin
this command copies the boot sector from drive A to the file bootsect.bin
Insert the formatted USB flash drive
type the command: mkbt –x bootsect.bin g:
this command creates a boot sector for the USB flash drive from the bootsect.bin file created from the floppy disk.
6. Change the current directory to C:NetBoot
Type the command makedisk
Then copy the entire contents of drive A to the USB Flash Disk
At this point, you have a bootable Flash Disk that can log into the Network (supports most common network cards)
References: http://nu2.nu, http://www.netbootdisk.com
Author: Le Di
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