We can run software completely independently of a machine's onboard operating system, which allows us to run apps and utilities for partitioning, cloning, imaging and backup, as well as tools for recovery and repair. Fortunately there are a few utilities around that can do all of this for us in a single operation.īootable flash devices can be used to install an operating system, which can be particularly useful on a machine that does not have an optical drive. To create a bootable flash device from an ISO file we have to make sure our USB stick or SD memory card is indeed bootable by being partitioned and formatted correctly before we extract and copy all of the individual files to the device. ISO image file is similar to a Zip file in that it holds many separate files that have been packaged up into a single file. Make a Bootable USB/SD Flash Device from an ISO Image FileĪn.