Assume that your USB disk's drive letter is **D:**
CentOS/Fedora Bootable Installation Key
---------------------------------------
* Clear all partitions with `fdisk`
* Create a 100M primary, bootable ('a' key), FAT ('t' and then 'b')
partition
* Then create another primary partition to fill up the rest of the
space
* Write changes and then issue:
mkfs -t vfat /dev/
mkfs /dev/
* Install `livecd-tools`
* Run it:
livecd-iso-to-disk /full/path/to/CentOS_image.iso /dev/
* Mount the *Linux partition* and copy the ISO file
* You're set. [Thanks, brah](http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2010-April/093806.html).
On Windows
----------
### Step 1 : Use `diskpart` to create bootable media
diskpart
select disk 1
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=fat32
assign
exit
For the step highlighted above, use `list disk` to make sure that your
USB stick is, indeed, **disk 1**. At this point, the USB stick has a
primary partition and should be bootable. However, it doesn't have
anything to *boot* per se.
### Step 2 : Use `xcopy` to copy over the files to be booted
From the directory containing the boot files (these could be Windows
installation files, for example), issue:
xcopy *.* /s/e/f D:\
Where **D:** is the drive letter of your USB stick. Et voila! Install
away!
Other notes and resources
-------------------------
* [Unetbootin](http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/) is a great tool for
bootable USB on Windows and Linux (GUI only)
* The [LiveUSB Creator](https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/)
is another option.
* [Hiren's Boot CD](http://www.hirensbootcd.net) remains my favorite
tool for all sorts of diagnostics
* Also has a [dandy USB formatting
tool](http://www.hirensbootcd.net/usb-booting.html)
* Linux distros [like Knoppix](http://www.knoppix.org) might also be
useful for this purpose
* [Other elaborate
resources](http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Booting_from_USB)
also exist!
* An excellent idea would be to [roll everything into one using
GRUB](http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=621496)