ISO to USB Creates Bootable USB from Bootable ISO

Yesterday, I needed to format my Windows partition due to unavoidable problems. But since my DVD drive was causing problems I had to choose USB as the installation medium. Installation from USB is advantageous mainly because it is reliable over CD/DVD and its access speed it much high. I had a image file of the installation disk in my hard disk and the problem was to write that ISO file to an USB. As I mentioned before GBurner has such features, but I searched a while for an alternate standalone solution and found a tiny software named ISO to USB. The developer says,

ISO to USB is a free and small software that can burn the ISO image file directly to the USB drives, these USB drives include USB flash drives, memory sticks and other USB storage devices, it also supports to create a bootable USB disk with Windows operating systems.

Features & Specifications

• The installer [1.43 Mb] is not digitally signed and can be downloaded from the following location.

http://www.isotousb.com/isotousb_setup.exe

• The current version of the software is clean from malware and has the following file hash.

CRC-32: b57afa46

MD4: 1a24fcac3e3a1ba1764d35c39034bc84
MD5: 7d6a8895408e1791762092f61eba4a2c
SHA-1: f99f72a2ef008db3d993b40c2656be852e4dc52f

• The installation is clean and quite fast. it requires 4.3 Mb of free disk space and creates a desktop icon and launches the application at installation end.
• The Software GUI is clean and has no additional settings other than an option to create bootable USB and choose file system. It supports FAT, FAT32, exFAT and NTFS file systems.

• Although there is no online or offline help documentation, the software usage is easy enough. Just browse for the ISO image and select your desired USB. The Refresh helps to find newly connected USB.
• Once all is done click on Burn to initiate the burning process. You will get two repeated warnings informing that all the data in your USB will be deleted.
• During the burning process it is detects that either the file or the USB is locked, it will force unlock or unmount those after an warning.
• The software GUI remained non-responsive throughout the burning process although the burning took place smoothly and at the completion it will give a successful message.
• The software uses little system resources at idle time and moderately high during burning ISO to USB.

My Verdict

I liked the software and will recommend it. A portable version would be handy. I figured out a way to create a portable version by copying the contents of the installation directory [viz. C:\Program Files\ISO to USB] except unins000.dat and unins000.exe and your can launch the software anytime by executing isotousb.exe.

Cheers !!