Discussion on:

Review: Universal USB Installer for Windows

How often do you need a bootable USB thumb drive?

as opposed to using 7Zip on a downloaded iso, extract it to your USB thumb drive,
then run the built-in command to make the drive bootable? Most of the live distros
I've played with have both Linux and Windows scripts for doing this. Works quite
well too. I also tried UnetBootin, and while it did work, it put extras in the MBR that
I didn't need compared to using 7Zip.

Universal USB Installer doesn't simply extract files from an ISO and call it a day. It actually does the extras you mention, such as writing a proper MBR and aligning partitions so that your thumb drive will indeed boot the distro. Universal USB Installer is direct competition to UnetBootin and I tend to prefer the interface and experience of the former over the latter.

Also, you mention a "built-in" command that can make a drive bootable. As far as I'm aware, no such feature exists in a Windows environment when creating a bootable Linux thumb drive. Not to mention, dd for Windows is a third-party port of a UNIX application, which can be found on the Net.

anyway with the 3 I've used most they were...usually named something like
"install_to_usb.sh" or "install_to_usb.cmd" for Linux and Windows, respectively. These are included inside the downloads for Slax 6.1.2, the
new Slax 7 and in Salix KDE 14. The associated web sites also have pretty
good instructions on how to install the live distro to a USB.
While this Universal USB Installer may be handy for a distro that does not
include the "install_to_usb" commands, some of the ones that do may not
behave as expected (that was my experience with Salix using UnetBootin).
Sorry for the confusion, I did not mean the command was internal to Windows.

"For added convenience, a persistent file storage area can be added so that, if you are in a Live USB session and want to save documents, for instance, you will be able to save directly to the flash drive without running into read-only restrictions that obviously plague burned discs."
Can you elaborate on that statement?

Charlie

In addition to dumping a Linux live ISO right onto the thumb drive, the "persistent" storage area you can create allows you to save changes to settings and files directly within the session so you can avoid losing that information when you reboot, like desktop wallpaper or newly created bookmarks in the web browser.

For another explanation of this, read LifeHacker's piece on this feature...

http://lifehacker.com/5574276/universal-usb-installer-makes-a-persistent-thumb-drive-version-of-any-linux-os

Hope this clears that up for you!

I've used this USB Installer to create bootable USB installation media for Win7 Home, Win7 64 Home, Win8 RTM, and Win8-64 RTM, worked great everytime. You do need to download the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool from MS to make it work. And I have used it for several Linux distros as well. A fantastic tool for those who like to play with a different OS every day.