How to install multiple functional operating systems on a flash drive

Operating systems have evolved a lot from a few years to the present day, one of the most important novelties that can already be installed on a USB flash drive so that you can always carry them with us or be able to run them without having to write anything to the computer's hard drive. In this tutorial we are going to see how to install multiple functional operating systems on a flash drive using different tools.

Learn how to install multiple functional operating systems on a flash drive

All we are going to need is a pendrive and the ISO images of the operating systems that we want to install, in this case we are going to use both Windows and Linux distributions. First of all we have to know that the installation of Windows on a USB stick can be very slow depending on the writing speed of the USB stick used, that is why we recommend using a fairly fast drive.

Running an operating system from a pendrive has several advantages, among them we highlight that we can perform maintenance tasks when it is not possible to access the system installed on the computer's hard drive, this applies to both Linux and Windows. Thanks to this we can solve file corruption problems, malware infections and much more.

WinSetupFromUSB is the best tool we can find

For this task, install multiple functional operating systems on a USB stick. We are going to use the WinSetupFromUSB tool, it is a small free application that will help us with the necessary tasks to prepare the USB flash drive and copy the operating system files to it. First of all, it is highly recommended to format the pendrive from our current operating system to avoid possible problems during the process.

WinSetupFromUSB is compatible with Windows from version 2000 and with systems based on Linux and BSD, which is why it is one of the best tools since they can be used with almost all operating systems today. To make it even better, it allows us to run Windows, DOS and Linux systems and is compatible with UEFI and Legacy BIOS since version 1.1. Without a doubt this program is one of the heavyweights in its category.

The first thing we have to do to install multiple functional operating systems on a flash drive is to download it from its official website, you just have to click here. Once the application is downloaded, its installation is extremely simple and does not hide any mystery.

Once we run the application we find a window in which we have access to a large number of options. The first thing we will have to do is choose the unit in which we want to write the data, that is, the Pendrive that we want to use and that we must previously connect to the equipment so that the application can detect it. This application gives us the option of auto-formatting the flash drive, we can use it but as we have said before we recommend doing it manually before starting the process to avoid any problem.

Below this we have the options to add the different operating systems to our flash drive, as we can see we have a section for each type of system making it a tool that is very well organized. When we choose a system we will see that the application gives us the option to modify the name that will be shown in the system selection menu, we can leave the one that comes by default without problems.

First of all, we have the option of adding Windows 2000, 2003 and XP systems. The latter may be the most interesting of the three since it is the most recent and we can find ourselves in the situation of having to use some type of software that is not compatible with later versions.

Next we have the option for Windows Vista, 7, 8, 10 and Windows Server systems. Here we find the most current Windows as 8 and 10 that surely are very useful to us on more than one occasion.

We leave Windows territory and find Linux and other much less known operating systems and / or tools. For this we have three different sections, without a doubt the most important is the penultimate one that is the one that we will use to add the Linux distributions that interest us.

At the bottom of the application we have the options to show the advanced settings, here we will find many options that we will not need to use as normal, so we should not give much importance to this option. There are also the options to show us the progress of the application in a log and an option related to the QEMU virtual machine that we do not need to pay attention to either so we will leave all of them unchecked.

Once everything is ready, press "Go" and let the application work, the whole process is automatic so we only need to have a little patience and wait for it to finish.

Once the process of installing multiple functional operating systems on a flash drive has finished, the following message will appear.

With this we will have our pendrive ready to start the computer with it and without the need to access the operating system installed on the hard drive.