Making a UEFI & MBR muitiboot usb

so i just brought a 128GB sandisk ultra usb 3.0 because as a computer tec im tired of fumbling through my tons of usb drivers to do a job. , i want my windows installers & Linux, bookable tools and such all in one usb. so i looked into multibooting usbs and came across many tools, one being SARDU. but i need a hybird UEFI/MBR boot and my laptop doesn't support uefi & legacy simultaneously only one or the other. so using SARDU i cant see or boot from the usb unless i switch bios to legacy mode, works well because i see and can boot from all of what i have windows installers and linux distros but i have to keep switching back and forth between legacy and uefi. i was wondering if i can make the usb primarily Uefi bootable BUT also bootable for a old MBR if needed.

Hi xdarkmario,

I'm not sure if this what you're looking for, but YUMI is a somewhat popular one, which I found very handy.

b1rd

b1rd said:

Hi xdarkmario,

I'm not sure if this what you're looking for, but YUMI is a somewhat popular one, which I found very handy.

b1rd

\yea i tried that one before but it dosent state if its UEFI compatible or not

Hi there
If you are creating either Windows or Linux install media then an MBR / UEFI system is created anyway and at boot you can choose to load the UEFI or MBR version.

For windows 10 use the media creation tool directly -- when prompted choose USB rather than ISO.

For Linux builds most distros come in .ISO format -- simply use RUFUS to create a bootable USB. The system will create a "Hybrid" UEFI / MBR boot system unless you specifically choose MBR or UEFI. At boot time the boot menu (at least on my laptop) will show MBR and UEFI as different boot selections.

If you partition your USB stick into two partitions then you can have a Windows / Linux install system.

Get into cmd mode (administrator) and use DISKPART to create 2 partitions on your USB (or even 3). What I'd recommend is say 1 partition for a Windows install system, 1 partition for a Linux install system and 1 partition for a Macrium reflect rescue system.

If you are feeling really adventurous (and with 128 GB it should be possible) create 4 partitions and have a Linux LIVE CD on the 4th partition.
4 Partitions are the max on the USB.

They all need to be PRIMARY partitions.

Cheers
jimbo

cereberus said:

Actually this is not quite true. It's a bit more subtle than that.

When you use the hybrid mode, it is for pcs which support csm legacy bios as well as uefi.

It creates an mbr partitioned usb disk, but allows to install OS on a GPT drive for when using UEFI, or on an MBR drive when using legacy bios.

The subtle point is the PC has to be capable of supporting both legacy bios and UEFI for this to work, and PC has to be put into legacy bios mode (or be able to autodetect mode e.g. if it sees an mbr usb, it chooses legacy bios).

If the PC does not support legacy bios mode eg. tablets/hybrids often only support UEFI, then the usb stick has to be setup in gpt format for 64bit installs of UEFI at least (not sure about special case 32bit UEFI but these require special bootloaders anyway).

So it is not 100% possible to have an all purpose USB stick.

Hi there

OK I could stand corrected here since my laptop supports both BIOS and Legacy --so it does work on my system -- HP laptop.

When you press ESC at boot to get the boot menu you'll be presented with a whole slew of the boot systems - 1 for the MBR and one for the UEFI giving 8 choices for the USB stick plus whatever other boot devices - external HDD's, notebook internal Hard drive etc.

I haven't got any UEFI only devices to test this on - but the principle should be the same --just have two sticks- one all purpose and another UEFI only.


Cheers
jimbo

As for me I tried to install multiple oses on my flash drive using sardu but looks like sardu does not apply the uefi files as it says it does. The efi folder and boot folder are empty. So I'm looking for a grub bootloader that is both uefi and can not windows as well.
If perhaps do anyone of you know a real uefi multi bootloader?