Create bootable DVD from bootable USB

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fastgeek

[H]ard|DCOTM x4 aka "That Company"
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Seems everything out there refers to doing things the other way around; make a USB from DVD. For a project I'm working on at work I need to take a bootable Acronis (legal software, thank you) USB stick w/ image and create a bootable DVD with everything still intact; then ideally have it work with larger spanned images too. Have tried a few things and figured I'd check to see if anyone knows of a good program that'll do this without too much trouble. Not to be too picky, but something you have actually used and know works. ;)

Alternatively I'm open to creating a custom DVD that will do what I want using whatever boot loader that's deemed best. Would prefer to avoid Windows PE setups for two reasons - size and possible legal issues... so suppose that mainly leaves some kind of unix setup.

Thoughts / ideas are appreciated! :)
 
Well, this may be close to what you're asking for. (Can discuss the legality of what I did years ago later.)

I originally had a Windows XP Professional OEM CD that came with my laptop. I wanted to slipstream Service Pack 2 into it. When I did that, for some reason that I haven't figured out up to now is that it made the CD unbootable at startup.

Looking around the internet (back then...), I found I had to add a boot sector image to the CD ISO. To do that, I had to make an image file from a bootable floppy disk in an .IMA or .IMG format.

From there, I used a program such as CDBurnerXP Pro (or PowerISO) to create an ISO. I basically copied the files from the WinXP Pro CD into the program, made sure the autoexec.bat file was at the root of the CD directory, and created the ISO image.

I then took that ISO image and burned it to a CD.

So, the steps are basically:
  • Create an image of a bootable floppy disk using dd.exe. One example of instructions: http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/

    DD.EXE download link is located halfway down.

    Links to downloadable (freely available) floppy disk images: http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
    Many of the files are from Microsoft themselves directly such as: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310994
  • Go into my ISO creation program of choice (mine is CDBurner XP Pro since it's free; others recommend PowerISO since it doesn't corrupt the ISO image according to user testimony but isn't free).

    In that program, locate the option to create a bootable CD image (or similar). Load the created bootable image file (i.e.-- boot.img or boot.ima).

    In CDBurnerXP Pro, it looks like the following:

    Screenshot-2011-12-30_18.50.04.png


    For Nero Burning Rom: http://www.bay-wolf.com/bootcd.htm
  • Add the files I want in the ISO image file.
  • Optionally: If needed, add an autoexec.bat file. I will have to look into this further since it's been years since I've done that.
  • Create ISO image.
  • Burn CD or DVD ISO to recordable media.
Hopefully this is something to start you out with.
 
Hi octoberasian,

Thank you for taking the time to reply. Don't think that's quite what I'm looking for, but will go through it just to be sure. It seems that the bootloader Acronis uses is a bit stubborn. Had thought I could take a bootable rescue disc of theirs, create an iso image of it, then simply add files to it as needed. Now either that isn't possible, or I did something wrong... chances are the latter. Will play around with it more and we'll see.

Thanks again!
 
Is it possible to do what I mentioned above but use a bootable floppy disk image file? Then, from there use an autoexec.bat batch file to point to the executable or command you want to load when the computer boots from it.

The way it works is that the computer believes/sees that the CD or DVD media is a floppy disk and boots from it.

It might be something close to what you wanted to do. I'll see if I can get an Acronis rescue disk and test it myself.
 
So I changed tack a little. With UltraISO I was able to extract the boot data from ATIH 2012 to a BIF file. Then created a new DVD project in UI, loaded the BIF and added the files desired. Works just fine, even with a multi-split image. Thing is, I tried something similar with other programs without success, hence why I was trying to do the whole "USB to DVD" idea. Anyway, can now create custom discs with our Acronis discs for clients, and that's a good thing. Believe it or not, all of this stemmed from trying to avoid creating a part number for just the Acronis disc... seems silly, but around here avoiding additional PN's and all the related headache is highly sought after. :p
 
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