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Multi-Boot External

By davpal86 ·
I work as a tech in a mom and pop computer store and we have a huge problem with the Windows install discs disappearing at the most in-opportune times.

Anyways, to my question:

Is there any way to make a bootable external hard drive that you can put images of all of the Operating Systems you want and use a boot manager to select which image to boot from and install from there? Is this even viable?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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Yes it's possible

by OH Smeg Moderator In reply to Multi-Boot External

But you would have to install some form of Boot Manager on the external drive to boot off and then chose which OS you want to install.

Normally you save the Install Files to the Root of a Drive and the system picks up the Install and runs the Install from that point. However as you want more than 1 set of Install Files you can not place them in the Root of the Drive so you need to add another layer so the process.

However you would need to be sure that the majority of your machines can boot from USB. Most of the newer ones it's not a problem but that wasn't always true with older hardware. It would probably be easier to make a copy of the Install Files and burn a CD/DVD or Thumb Drive as needed.

Col

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