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Friday, 18 July 2025 13:12

USB to ISO, ISO to USB, Bootable ISO

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This will cover a lot of topics to do with ISO and burning.

Software

  • Burners / Authoring
    • ImgBurn
      • ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application that everyone should have in their toolkit... and it's free!
    • AnyBurn
      • A light weight but professional disc burning, imaging, and bootable USB drive creation software
    • ShapeISO
      • A free and excellent ISO editor software that helps you burn, extract and create ISO image files on Windows computers.
    • PowerISO
      • Create, Burn, Mount, Edit, Compress, Encrypt, Split, Extract ISO file, ISO/BIN converter, Virtual Drive.
      • PowerISO is a disk image utility that can open, burn, create, edit, compress, encrypt, mount and extract ISO files.
      • PowerISO comes with some unwanted programs (PUP) but you can simply turn off the internet in your PC (switch off WiFi or Ethernet) before installing PowerISO and it will skip the installation of the PUP.
      • Menu: Tools --> Create ISO from USB
  • USB <--> Image
    • Rufus
      • Create bootable USB drives the easy way
      • Rufus can format a USB drive in the following partition schemes/formats
        • MBR
        • GPR
        • Super Floppy Disk
      • How to create bootable USB drive for Windows 11 with Rufus (2025) - Pureinfotech
        • Rufus lets you create a bootable Windows 11 USB for supported and unsupported hardware. Also, it offers the option to download the ISO file.
        • Create a bootable Windows USB drive with modifications.
      • How to Use Rufus: A Complete Guide | UUByte
        • Rufus is a popular free software for creating bootable USB. Do you know how to use it? This is a complete guide for using Rufus.
        • Rufus is best known for its ability to create bootable USB drive by burning ISO image to USB. However, it's more than that. In fact, you can use Rufus to create a non-bootable BIOS or UEFI device with GPT or Super Floppy Disk partition scheme. Also, you can format USB device as NTFS, FAT32, or UDF, adjust the volume label, and set your own cluster size.
      • Do you plan to add USB → ISO creation support? - FAQ · pbatard/rufus Wiki · GitHub
        • i.e. Do you plan to allow a feature that can reverse what Rufus does when converting a bootable ISO to bootale USB, so that a bootable ISO can be created back again?
        • This was added in Rufus 4.10. If you show the advanced drive properties, and you have a compatible USB or VHD drive selected, then you can click the "save" icon next to it to save the drive content to an ISO.
        • Also note that you can already use Rufus to create a VHD/VHDX image anyway (see the relevant entry in this FAQ), which, in most cases, is probably what you are really after. Rufus will happily open and write .vhd/.vhdx images just like it can open .iso images.
    • ISO to USB
      • ISO to USB is a free and small software that can burn the ISO image file directly to the USB drives, these USB drives include USB flash drives, memory sticks and other USB storage devices, it also supports to create a bootable USB disk with Windows operating systems.
      • The ISO image file is a popular image of the CD/DVD discs, an ISO file can include all the content on the disc, this software can easily burn these ISO files to a USB flash disk, makes it easy to carry and use.
      • This software currently only support Windows bootable disk, can work with both BOOTMGR and NTLDR boot mode, can create USB disk with FAT, FAT32, exFAT or NTFS file system. (When you are making a bootable USB disk, suggest you choose the FAT32 file system.)
    • balenaEtcher - Flash OS images to SD cards & USB drives
      • A cross-platform tool to flash OS images onto SD cards and USB drives safely and easily. Free and open source for makers around the world.
    • EaseUS Todo Backup
      • This software can create a bootable USB drive and put ISO on USB drives. It also helps in creating an image of a USB drive and putting ISO on USB drives.
      • An easy-to-use free data backup software for Windows 11/10 users to back up photos, music, videos, documents, system, etc. for PC users. 
  •  Builders
  • Converters
    • IMG to ISO
      • IMG to ISO is a free small software utility, as its name suggests, it can convert the IMG image files into the ISO image files.
      • The IMG is an disk image file format, it be used by some virtual drive software, Its file extension is generally .img or .ima. The ISO format seems to be more popular than IMG format now, So, if you want to convert your IMG files into ISO files, this little software just helps you.
    • The ISO format file that is created by this program can conform to the standard ISO-9660 format. You can also use this software to open *.ima files

Tutorials

  • Extracting Boot Sector from ISOs
    • Extracting boot sectors from Windows ISOs | BetaArchive
      • Bootsector is not stored in the files, but in the image itself...
      • How to manually extyract the boot sector: 
        1. Download and install 7-ZIP 9.20 from: http://www.7-zip.org/
        2. Open a bootable Windows 2000/XP ISO file with 7-ZIP.
        3. There is a folder named [BOOT].
        4. Go in into [BOOT].
        5. The boot sector file is named "Bootable_NoEmulation.img".
        6. Extract this bootsector.
        7. Rename Bootable_NoEmulation.img to BOOTSECT.BIN
        8. Copy your Windows Whistler PE CD to your hard disk e.g. "C:\WINPE"
        9. Place BOOTSECT.BIN in the folder "C:\WINPE\I386".
        10. Then use a application that will create your bootable ISO file.
    • Extracting floppy boot image from ISO with dd? | GRC Public Forums
      • I know there are utilities that can extract the boot image from a CD ISO which can then be used to create a boot floppy or another bootable CD ISO. Anyone know if the differences in the boot header for a bootable FreeDOS floppy image, CD ISO or USB ISO is the sector number where the boot code is located?
      • That being said, on Windows I have used 7-zip to extract the boot file. 7-zip shows it in a special folder called "[BOOT]".
        If you install 7-zip on Linux (p7zip-full) you can use the 7z command to extract the file: 
        7z e isofile.iso '[BOOT]'
      • Mentions balenaEtcher for making USB drives.
    • How to Extract Boot Sector Information from a Bootable DVD | Tom's Hardware Forum
      • Use UltraISO with these instructions to extract the .BIF file.
      • The bootable disc has a .BIF file i.e. boot information file which is responsible for booting the disc from a removable storage. Every bootable disk, thus, has a .BIF file that makes it bootable. The difference between a normal installation disk and a boot time installation disk lies mainly in the boot information sector.
    • Boot Image Extractor - How to extract boot image from CD/DVD? | WinISO - WinISO is a powerful ISO Extractor, which can extract not only ISO image file but extract the boot image file if you desired.
  • Create a Bootable USB
  • Bootable USB to ISO
    • How to Convert Bootable USB to an ISO Image (Tutorial) - YouTube
      • In this tutorial video, I'll show you How to Convert Bootable USB to an ISO image. So, if you've been wondering how to create an ISO image file from files and folders, this video is for you as I'll take you through the entire process step-by-step.
      • AnyBurn, ImgBurn
    • 2 Timeless Ways to Convert Bootable USB Drive to ISO
      • Due to some reason, you need to convert bootable USB to ISO. Then you can refer to the methods offered in this post to complete the operation.
      • ImgBurn, AnyBurn
    • How to Convert Bootable USB to ISO (windows 10/11)
      • You created a bootable USB of Windows 11, 10, or even 8.1 after downloading it. Then you deleted the ISO file to make space on the partition since we have the bootable. Now you want to create another bootable but the original ISO is missing. No worries as you can convert bootable USB to ISO.
      • ImgBurn
    • 2 Free Ways to Convert Bootable USB to ISO on Windows 10
      • How to convert bootable USB to ISO in Windows 10? Here you can know how to easily create ISO file from a bootable USB for free.
      • Sometimes you may need to create an ISO file from bootable USB for some purpose. Here this article will show you how to easily convert bootable USB to ISO on Windows 10 with 2 ways for free.
      • ShapeISO, AnyBurn
    • How to Convert Bootable USB to ISO
      • Converting your bootable USB to an ISO can save you from these headaches. If you delete the original ISO after making the bootable USB, you will have to redownload it later. It’s easy to convert a bootable USB to ISO on Windows; here are the two best ways to do it.
      • AnyBurn, ImgBurn
    • How to Create ISO Image from USB with USB to ISO
      • What is an ISO file? Are you looking for a way to create ISO image from USB? This article will tell how to create an ISO from USB drives on Windows 11/10/8/7.
      • EaseUS Todo Backup, Rufus, DISM
    • Make Bootable ISO Image from a Bootable USB Drive
      • Learn how you can create a bootable ISO image using a bootable USB drive (with Windows installation files on it) very easily.
      • Extract the .BIF from an existing Bootable ISO and use that.
      • PowerISO
    • DiskGenius focused
      • Create an .iso out of a bootable USB stick? | Ventoy Forum
        • e.g. the software DiskGenius (https://www.diskgenius.com) can only create a bootable USB stick (UEFI and BIOS), but not an .iso that I could use with Ventoy directly.
        • Just copy the boot.wim file to the Ventoy USB disk and boot to the boot.wim directly from Ventoy - no need to make an ISO. You will need to add Wimboot Plugin too.
        • Plugin.wimboot . Ventoy - Ventoy use this plugin to boot WIM files (Legacy BIOS + UEFI). 
      • Recommendations for bootable ISOs to add to Ventoy | Windows 11 Forum
        • Q: I have not yet discovered an easy way to convert a bootable USB drive to a bootable ISO. Many utilities that claim to do this are getting long in the tooth - i.e 2012 or 2016 and I'd like to use more recent apps.
        • A: There are a few methods and techniques on this thread so I will just summarise them.
          • oscdimg (Page 1) 
            oscdimg.exe -m -o -u2 -udfver102 -bootdata:2#p0,e,bd:\iso_files\boot\etfsboot.com#pEF,e,bd:\iso_files\efi\microsoft\boot\efisys.bin d:\iso_files d:\14986PROx64.iso

becomes

oscdimg.exe -m -o -u2 -udfver102 -bootdata:2#p0,e,bE:\boot\etfsboot.com#pEF,e,bE:\efi\microsoft\boot\efisys.bin E:\ C:\users\myname\myiso.iso

You can create a one line batch file to do above.
          • You could use cdimage, oscdimg or mkisofs which are command line tools, Or you can use, Lancer, which has a GUI  (Page 1)
          • Copy the DiskGenius WIM to the Ventoy disk and boot from that. (Page 1)
          • Windows-isomaker_x64_x86_sha256.zip (Page 1)
          • isomaker.zip  (Page 1)
          • mkisofs Linux (Page 1) 
            sudo mkisofs -o /path/to/image. iso /dev/sdb
            • replacing /path/to/image. iso with the desired location and name of your ISO file and /dev/sdb with the device name of your USB drive.
          • isomaker-DISKGENIUS.zip (Page 2)
            • Lancer _x64 wont work for the unusual construction of diskgenius boot media.
            • I have done a special one for diskgenius.
            • Instructions
              • Copy and paste the diskgenius usb stick to a hard drive.
              • Rt click the usb stick and select copy. Rt click on a hard drive partition and select paste.
              • So you have a folder e.g. C:\DISKGENIUS ( it will have the same name as the usb stick)
              • then run the .cmd file and browse to C:\DISKGENIUS
              • Do not browse to a sub folder inside C:\DISKGENIUS
            • I made a diskgenius usb stick and tested the above .
          • Boot from the WIM (Page 2)
            • You really only need to copy the file Boot.wim from the folder DiskGenius - Boot (and optionally rename the file to something like, e.g., DiskGenius 5.5.1.1508 x64.wim to make it easier for you to see what exactly this one is) to the root of the VENTOY partition that's on your USB flash drive. Aside from this, you also need to make sure that you have installed the Wimboot plugin for Ventoy before you boot from the USB flash drive. (For this, you need to create a new folder named ventoy in the root of the VENTOY partition, and then copy the file ventoy_wimboot.img into this folder like has been explained here.)
          • Use an existing Bootable ISO (Page 3)
            • Using something like the free anyburn, edit a known working iso file (e.g. your macrium iso file ).
            • Replace the \sources\boot.wim in the known working iso with the boot.wim from your diskgenius usb stick.
            • Then save the iso as a new name, e.g. diskgenius.iso
            • NB: I have not tried this.

 

Read 145 times Last modified on Sunday, 12 October 2025 14:47
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