A program for creating a bootable SD card. A guide to returning a bootable flash drive to its normal state. SD card recovery

I have a Toshiba Portege M205 tablet. The hard drive died, so I took another one and stuck it there, with the intention of reinstalling Windows XP Tablet. However, this particular computer is not equipped optical drive. Instead it has a USB CDRW/ DVD drive. There are only one or two USB flash drive models Toshiba USB, which are bootable and the M205 does not boot from USB.

Needless to say, my Toshiba CD drive died and I can't boot from it.

Another option is to boot from an SD card. I would like to boot into an environment with USB drivers so that I can connect another USB stick and install Windows on my tablet. I tried using WinToFlash, but I couldn't get it to work on SD cards.

Does anyone know how to make a bootable SD card with USB drivers?

I would like to add that the M205 can only recognize up to 32 or 64 MB SD cards, so I cannot install installation media onto the SD card.

One Solution collect form web for “Create a bootable SD card”

How to create bootable Windows SD card or flash drive

Step 1: Partitioning your SD card

Start>cmd

DiskPart

And then select disk 2 based on your disk number for SD card

After selecting Clean

Create Main Partition Section

Select section 1

Active

This step will take some time so be patient

Format fs = fat32

Assign letter = y

Exit

Step 2: Copy iso

Mount the iso using MagicDisc or paste Windows DVD/CD

The following command copies boot disk, here E: is the source drive, if you are a Windows carrier is Y: this is your SD card

Xcopy e: *y:\/s/e/f

Almost any user can do this, regardless of his or her knowledge and experience. You just need to download the ISO image and burn it to a CD or DVD. But if we want to make a bootable USB flash drive, then the procedure has its own nuances, depending on operating system.

If we copy an ISO image or the files it contains to a USB drive, we will not get anything good. We need to turn the flash drive into a boot partition. Typically, this process deletes all information from the USB drive or SD card.

How to create installation media with Linux, having only Windows

For those who want to make a bootable USB flash drive with Ubuntu from Windows, it is recommended to use Universal USB Installer. It allows you to work with almost any Linux distribution. Alternative option is UNetbootin.

To create a bootable Linux flash drive, download an ISO image of the selected distribution from the Internet. Launch one of the programs mentioned above, point it to the location of the .ISO file, and then select the USB drive that you want to make bootable. Everything else will be done without your direct participation.

Under Linux, you can use programs with similar functions. For example, Ubuntu has Startup Disk Creator, which can create flash drives with this operating system. There is also UNetbootin, which runs on Linux. Therefore, you can use this utility.

What if we have an IMG file?

Some operating system distributions are distributed as an IMG file rather than an ISO. IMG is an image designed to be written not to an optical disk, but directly to a flash drive.

To transfer it to a USB drive or SD card, use the Win32 Disk Imager program. You just need to download the IMG file, specify this instrument, where it is located, and select the desired flash drive. All files on the media, when IMG is written to it, are destroyed. Using this tool, you can also create IMG images using a bootable USB flash drive or SD card as a basis.

More experienced Linux users can use the dd command to write an IMG image to any removable media. Insert the removable media and run the following command (on Ubuntu):

Sudo dd if=/home/user/file.img of=/dev/sdX bs=1M

Instead of /home/user/file.img, specify the path to the IMG file, and instead of /dev/sdX, specify the path to the SD card or flash drive. Be careful when specifying the path to removable media. If you specify a disk with the system or data instead, you will erase them completely.

Create a bootable USB flash drive with Windows 7 from an ISO file

You can use a Microsoft tool that allows you to download Windows image 7 and create a boot disk or flash drive. To run this tool, you will need an ISO installation file from Windows 7. I hope you have the license key to install this operating system?

Bootable USB flash drive Windows 8 or 8.1

If you have a license key or 8.1, you can download the operating system image from the Microsoft website and immediately create an installation flash drive. First you need to download the corresponding tool from the page Windows updates. Naturally, you will need a license key for this. Launch the tool, enter the key, and choose to create a USB installation media.

Please note that Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 have different keys. Therefore, if you want to create an installation Windows flash drive 8.1, having a key for Windows 8, you will have to go through a roundabout route. The easiest way is to install Windows 8 first and then upgrade to Windows 8.1 for free. There's nothing complicated about it.

Burning a Windows 8 installation flash drive from an ISO file

If you already have an ISO file with Windows 8 or 8.1, then you can use the tool that I mentioned in the paragraph about Windows 7. This eliminates the need to download a large file.

Just feed it an ISO image with Windows 8 or 8.1.

DOS

If you need to boot your computer with good old DOS (for example, sometimes this is the only way to update the BIOS or use special low-level utilities), you can use Rufus to create bootable media.

This tool will write FreeDOS to a flash drive - a free analogue of MS DOS with open source code. It can run all programs created for DOS.

Mac OS X

To create a bootable USB flash drive in Mac OS X, first update your operating system to latest version. To do this, use App Store on the computer. Next, run the “createinstallmedia” utility from Apple or third party program DiskMaker X.

Removable media with an OS X image can be used to “clean” install the operating system on a computer or update other machines, without downloading files from the Internet to them.

Making a bootable USB flash drive from Windows on Mac

If you plan to install Windows on your Mac, then use Boot Camp to burn the installation media. This program will guide you through the process of creating a flash drive for Windows installations with drivers for Apple computers and integrated Boot Camp utilities.

This USB stick will allow you to install Windows on Mac computers, but don't try to use it on computers that don't have the apple in its mouth.

In this article I have mentioned only the most popular solutions. But there are other ways to create bootable flash drive for a particular operating system.

SD cards play a special role in the lives of Linux users. Yes, they are used to store data. It is also one of the most simple ways expand memory capacity on laptop. In most cases, these little squares of portable memory are what you'll need in the first place to turn a Windows or Mac OS device into a Linux Box.

Since SD cards solve so many problems, it won't hurt to know how to manage them. Errors happen and they can lead to data loss. No one is likely to like this outcome.

There are many ways to configure SD, both using the command line and using graphic applications. Here's how it's done.

What is a partition manager?

A partition is a piece of digital storage space. They could be all yours HDD, but this does not always happen. In the alternative boot option, you will have one section dedicated to some Linux distribution, and the other will be dedicated to Windows. Some use partitions to separate the OS from personal files. Often there is also a separate section for swap.

Partition Manager is a tool for managing partitions (not surprisingly). This is what you need to use to format SD cards, create new partitions or duplicates.

Usually, SD cards have only one partition by default, but if desired, one 32 GB card can always be divided into two 16 GB partitions.

Here's a 2 gigabyte card in my computer.

Typically memory cards are assigned simple names like /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, or /dev/sdc. But this doesn't always happen. In the version above, the name ==/dev/mmcblk0p1 == turned out to be much longer. If I were using the command line, which I'll talk about a little later, I would specify this exact location.

Another way to find out the path is to enter in the terminal:

You'll get a long list, so this method is recommended for those who already understand what they're looking for. Even then, I prefer to run the pre-installed partition manager.

Some desktop environments and distributions come with their own partition managers. Gnome DISKS (picture above) is integrated with the GNOME 3.x desktop, while KDE users are more likely to prefer KDE Partition Manager. It is still found in many distributions. All these tools essentially do the same thing.

If you are looking for a standalone program, without the need to install anything additional, that works on almost all Linux distributions, then pay attention to dd. This command line tool makes creating SD card backups and burning images a breeze. But you have to be careful when working with it, since one wrong command can completely erase everything from your hard drive.

Formatting SD cards

Section editors essentially give you the ability to select a section and format it into a new one. If you want to give away or simply get rid of the card, then it is possible to completely erase the data. This will take quite a lot of time, so if you just need to get rid of unnecessary data or create a bootable card with Linux, then it would be logical to choose the fast option.

During the process, you will have to select the partition type. FAT format Works with many operating systems. It is in this format that most SD cards begin their existence. It is quite possible that this is exactly what you need.

In order to erase all data from the card using the command line, we will resort to the help dd. The command below will erase all data from the card and replace it with zeros. information erased in this way can be restored. but most will not be able to do this.

Dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc

IN dd if denotes the data source. of indicates the direction. In this case, we copy the zeros to /dev/sdc. Replace this path with the one your computer assigned to the map.

After running the command, you may need to create a new partition. Perhaps even two.

Create a separate section

Creating a separate partition from the one you're already using is a risky choice that can lead to data loss. Although you can try to do this using GParted Live SD. To make things less painful, save all your data first. Erase the current section by clicking on "-" or selecting an option from the menu. then click on "+" or select the option to create a new partition.

Instead of using the available space, choose your volume. In the picture below, I'm preparing space for two partitions of the same size.

This way you can create a lot of sections.

If you want to do this via the command line, you can switch to fdisk and enjoy the magic.

Backing up your SD card

The most obvious way to create backup copy SD card - open it file manager and copy all data to your computer. This has always been enough for me. But this option is obviously not the best, especially if you want to get identical backup data or are going to store several or more backups at once.

In this case, you will need to create an image of the partition.

To do this in dd, open a terminal and enter the following.

Dd if=/dev/sdc of=sdcard.img

This command will back up everything on your card to an .img file in your home directory, allowing you to fully restore all data later. To create a backup on your hard drive, you will need as much space as is available on the SD card, that is, if you have a 32 gigabyte card, then you will need 32 free gigabytes on your hard drive. The process may take a long time. At some point it will even seem to you that dd has paused its work. Be patient.

SD card recovery

Once you are ready to recover the data on the card, simply swap the directories in dd .

Dd if=sdcard.img of=/dev/sdc

In the partition editor, use the image recovery option. Next, a window will appear for selecting the image you previously created for recording on the SD card.

Create a bootable SD card

To run Linux from an SD card using dd, first download the image of the distribution that you are going to install (or test). Then insert the path to this file as an if parameter, just as you did when restoring the data. Example:

Dd if=/home/user/Downloads/parabola-2015.11.11-dual.iso of=/dev/sdc

This is the last of the dd commands that I will describe here. Just know that dd is so powerful that it can clone your entire hard drive, even if you are operating with terabytes of memory. Once you're ready for something a little more advanced, you can head over to Wikipedia.org's list of dd commands. But, again, be careful! It's better not to rush with such things.

If you don't want to bother with command line, look in your distribution's package manager for a tool to create Live USB stick. Ubuntu has Satrtup Disk Creator. Fedora operates Live USB Creator. These and other distributions also work with When working with one of these tools, you will need to select an image to install (or force the application to download the distribution on the go) and an SD card as the target device.

SD cards: flexible and compact

SD cards have many advantages over flash drives. They are thinner, lighter, easier to carry in armfuls... In addition to everything else, they are connected in such a way that they are not visible later.

If you like flash drives, then it doesn't matter. Tools for working with cards are usually suitable for flash drives.

What advice would you give to people who want to learn how to manage their SD cards? Have you ever created multiple partitions on one card? Do you have a boot card? Share your experience in the comments!

Almost any user can make a boot disk, regardless of their knowledge and experience. You just need to download the ISO image and burn it to a CD or DVD. But if we want to make a bootable USB flash drive, then the procedure has its own nuances, depending on the operating system.

How to create installation media with Linux, having only Windows

What if we have an IMG file?

Some operating system distributions are distributed as an IMG file rather than an ISO. IMG is an image designed to be written not to an optical disk, but directly to a flash drive.

To transfer it to a USB drive or SD card, use the Win32 Disk Imager program. You just need to download the IMG file, tell this tool where it is located, and select the desired flash drive. All files on the media, when IMG is written to it, are destroyed. Using this tool, you can also create IMG images using a bootable USB flash drive or SD card as a basis.

More experienced Linux users can use the dd command to write an IMG image to any removable media. Insert the removable media and run the following command (on Ubuntu):

Sudo dd if=/home/user/file.img of=/dev/sdX bs=1M

Create a bootable USB flash drive with Windows 7 from an ISO file

You can use a Microsoft tool that allows you to download an image of Windows 7 and create a bootable disk or flash drive. To run this tool, you will need an ISO installation file from Windows 7. I hope you have the license key to install this operating system?

Bootable USB flash drive Windows 8 or 8.1

If you have a Windows 8 or 8.1 license key, you can download the operating system image from the Microsoft website and immediately create an installation flash drive. First, you need to download the appropriate tool from the Windows update page. Naturally, you will need a license key for this. Launch the tool, enter the key, and choose to create a USB installation media.

Please note that Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 have different keys. Therefore, if you want to create a Windows 8.1 installation flash drive with a key for Windows 8, you will have to go through a roundabout route. The easiest way is to install Windows 8 first and then upgrade to Windows 8.1 for free. There's nothing complicated about it.

Burning a Windows 8 installation flash drive from an ISO file

If you already have an ISO file with Windows 8 or 8.1, you can use the tool I mentioned in the Windows 7 section to create bootable media. This eliminates the need to download a large file.

Just “feed” it an ISO image with Windows 8 or 8.1.

DOS

If you need to boot your computer with good old DOS (for example, sometimes this is the only way to update the BIOS or use special low-level utilities), you can use Rufus to create bootable media.

This tool will write FreeDOS to a flash drive - a free, open-source analogue of MS DOS. It can run all programs created for DOS.

Mac OS X

To create a bootable USB flash drive in Mac OS X, first update the operating system to the latest version. To do this, use the App Store on your computer. Next, run Apple's “createinstallmedia” utility or the third-party program DiskMaker X.

Removable media with an OS X image can be used to “clean” install the operating system on a computer or update other machines, without downloading files from the Internet to them.

Making a bootable USB flash drive from Windows on Mac

If you plan to install Windows on your Mac, then use Boot Camp to burn the installation media. This program walks you through the process of creating a USB flash drive to install Windows with drivers for Apple computers and integrated Boot Camp utilities.

This USB stick will allow you to install Windows on Mac computers, but don't try to use it on computers that don't have the apple in its mouth.

In this article I have mentioned only the most popular solutions. But there are other ways to create a bootable USB flash drive for a particular operating system.

If to create boot disks you needed an iso image and an empty disk, then with USB drives it’s not so simple... You can’t just copy files from an iso to a flash drive and it will start booting, you need to USB yet was bootable. In today's article we will look at options for creating bootable USB drives and SD cards:

Linux ISO

To create bootable Linux USBs from Windows, it is recommended to use the universal USB Intaller. It can be used to create bootable USBs from various Linux distributions. If you need an alternative, then use

Download ISO image Linux distribution, which you want to use to create a bootable USB. Run USB Installer => select the desired distribution => select iso => and select your USB drive=> then after clicking on Create, the program will do all the necessary operations, and after completion you will have bootable usb

You can use similar tools on Linux. For example, Ubuntu includes a tool for creating bootable USBs called Startup Disk.

You can also use UNetbootin, it also works on Linux

From IMG file

Some operating systems do not come as an ISO image, but as an IMG image file. The image file can only be written to the storage device.

To write IMG files to USB drives and SD cards, use . Launch the program, select the downloaded Img file - recording to your drive will immediately begin, overwriting everything that was on the drive.

If you want to write the contents of IMG to USB from Linux, insert the drive and run the command on Ubuntu:

sudo dd if=/work/my/file.img of=/dev/sdX bs=1M

Where /work/my/file.img is the path to your img file, replace it and indicate where the file is located. /dev/sdX - indicates the drive to which recording will take place, carefully select this parameter! If you specify the path to the drive incorrectly (instead, specify system disk) - then the recording will occur along the destination path, overwriting all old data.

With Windows 7, 8 and 10 ISO

You can use the Windows USB/DVD Download Tool to create a bootable USB flash drive. You will need an ISO image of Windows and a key, as you probably already understood - if you find a non-licensed Windows somewhere, then using this utility you will not be able to make a bootable drive. It is best to use Rufus, this utility is universal for different Windows versions and I’m not picky about which ISOs we want to burn to the drive.

But if you have a disk with licensed Windows, then use the standard one Windows utility USB/DVD Download Too

Windows 8 or 8.1

Here, too, everything is simple, if you have a product key, then download from the Microsoft website a utility that itself downloads the image and creates a bootable drive. All you need is to download the tool, run it, enter the key and specify the drive you want to make bootable

If you have an ISO image and a product key, you can use Windows USB/DVD Download Too to burn, or if you have an ISO but no key, then Rufus.

If you need to boot from Dos and use various tools to restore your system, then Rufus will come in handy. As I already said, the utility is universal; you can use it to create a bootable drive (disk, memory card, etc.). The utility itself allows you to run any Dos programs, you can use it to write a constructor for system recovery, error correction, Live CD loading, etc.

To create a bootable drive on Mac you can use DiskMaker X.

Let's summarize: there are many utilities for creating bootable drives, but the most universal and suitable for many systems is Rufus. Using rufus you can create various bootable drives, quickly and efficiently :). I hope you find an option for yourself and create a bootable drive! If something doesn’t work out, or you know easier ways, write comments. Good luck to you!