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Comment by Eun | Hacker News Reader

What I am still looking for, is for a boot os that can boot a normal .iso/.img file from its own device. This will be the perfect usb boot stick.

1. Flash boot os on the boot sector, place any iso/img file on the stick.

2. Boot from the stick

3. select the iso you want to boot

Don't know it this is possible though... (I know that there is a emulation mode for virtual cd drives in the bios but thats about it...)

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I've seen various software that does this with multiple installer/liveCD ISOs for Linux distributions but none that could actually boot all arbitrary ISOs (Windows installers, DOS rescue disks) which need to be on a logical device partition.

I used to have a 2.5 enclosure that supports this in hardware (Zalman ZM-VE300) but selection of ISO is done on-device before booting. I don't see any reason you couldn't build a hardware/software combo where selection on-screen made the USB hardware mount the selected ISO as a new logical device and then booted it.

[1]: http://www.zalman.com/contents/products/view.html?no=212

You're looking for YUMI: https://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/

It's not 100% compatible with every ISO, but it's definitely possible to boot more than one thing from a single USB drive.

It is possible with EFI based boot loaders from what I've seen. I was looking for something similar and ended up discovering rEFIt and rEFInd. Although it isn't technically an OS it can autodetect entries from the MBR. http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/

EasyBCD can give you that, but you must run it to update the boot code each time you add an ISO (ie no dynamic detection).

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