How To Create Bootable CDs?

Smart guide to … stuff

There are many applications for
bootable CDs - the most common
being when undertaking
large roll-outs and when using test
rigs,where it is often useful to combine
operating systems with boot and diagnostic
diskettes to automate the process
of setting up machines.
If you need to repeatedly test from
clean installations it can save lots of
time if you image a disk drive and put
the image, along with the imagingsoftware,
on a bootable CD. It can also be
a timesaver to have frequently-used
boot and diagnostic diskettes on CD,
and it’s an easy way to work with PCs
that do not have a floppy disk drive.
To see if a PC supports booting
from a CD, check your BIOS setup
screens. SCSI drives have their own
BIOS on the adapter; IDE drives use
code in the system BIOS.Most modern
SCSI adapters have a BIOS that allows
it, and most motherboards of the last
two years support booting from IDE
CDdrives. If you are able to change the
boot options, and it lists “CD-ROM”,
your system supports booting from a
CD. If you have a 1995 or 1996motherboard
or SCSI cardthat doesnot support
it, it’s probably worth contacting
the manufacturer - many have BIOS
upgrades available.


Tips
l A rewriteable CDR drive is an extremely
useful tool when experimenting
with bootable CDs.
Although your test CDRW may be
unusable in some standard CD
drives, it can be used on themastering
systemif the CDRWdrive is set
as the primary CD, and this is
enough for general test purposes. If
you are planning on making a variety
of bootable CDs, or just experimenting,
CDRW has the obvious
advantage of media cost. If you
don’t have a CDRW, any failed experiments
can be used as multi-session
backups.
l When making hard disk image
CDs, an old hard disk drive around
650MB in sizemakes a useful addition
to your mastering system. As
hard disk images have certain partitioning
requirements, detailed
above, it’s much easier to have a
whole disk to use for your layout if
you are doing this type of work.
l UnderWindows NT, you will need
to have administrative rights if you
are creating hard disk images (this
requires access to all disk sectors).
l It is possible that you will encounter
older CDs that start to boot, fail
immediately and hang your system.
This is because there was no
initial standard for the first few sectors
of CDs and, although unlikely,
somemay contain a correct “validation
entry” without any of the other
required boot files.

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