Create a Bootable FreeDOS USB Drive on Linux With UNetbootin

I've previously shown how to create a bootable USB drive with Ubuntu and FreeDOS. While the technique in that post is educational, there is a much easier way. Use UNetbootin to do the work for you.

Install UNetbootin

You can download UNetbootin from SourceForge, or it may already be available in your Linux distro's repositories. To install it in Ubuntu, open a terminal window and enter

Run UNetbootin

Insert your blank USB drive into one of your USB ports first.
You can launch UNetbootin on Ubuntu through the menu at Applications?System Tools?UNetbootin.
You can also launch from the command line with the unetbootin command. You may get prompted to enter your password. UNetbootin should detect your USB drive automatically and select it.

Download and Install FreeDOS

Click the Select Distribution button and choose FreeDOS.

UNetbootin will begin downloading FreeDOS for you and install it to your flash drive.

UNetbootin Downloading FreeDOS

Once the process is complete, you can reboot your computer. Make sure to set your BIOS to boot to USB.

UNetbootin Done

Comments

12 Responses to “Create a Bootable FreeDOS USB Drive on Linux With UNetbootin”

1. fsdaily.com says:

   September 1, 2009 at 11:12 PM

   Story added...

   This story has been submitted to fsdaily.com! If you think this story should be read by the free software community, come vote it up and discuss it here:

   http://www.fsdaily.com/EndUser/Create_a_Bootable_FreeDOS_USB_Drive_on_Linux_With_UNetbootin...

   Reply
2. Create a Bootable FreeDOS USB Drive on Windows | Tux Tweaks says:

   September 9, 2009 at 10:03 PM

   [...] Create a Bootable FreeDOS USB Drive on Linux With UNetbootin [...]

   Reply
3. fred johns says:

   November 9, 2010 at 6:29 AM

   This Program is FANTASTIC , good post and good work to the developers

   Reply
4. Terry says:

   December 12, 2010 at 2:43 PM

   Get a "no operating system" message on USB boot

   Reply
   • Linerd says:

     December 12, 2010 at 2:57 PM

     I sometimes have problems re-using a USB stick with UNetbootin. Try formatting the drive first and then re-run UNetbootin to set up your flash drive.

     Reply
     • Edmond says:

       April 11, 2012 at 4:35 AM

       I know this is old but I am getting a similar message "missing operating system". How do you format your usb drive ? fat16 512mb ..etc ?

       Reply
       • Linerd says:

         April 11, 2012 at 8:45 AM

         It's been a while since I've done this, but I think I've always used FAT32.

         Reply
5. Peter says:

   August 16, 2011 at 2:05 PM

   Unetbootin is a nice app so kudos to the developers. One thing I could not figure out. After I have made my bootable FreeDOS USB stick with Unetbootin it boots fine. But when I mount the USB stick on my desktop, add a firmware.exe to the USB stick, sync, unmount and boot from the USB stick again then the firmware.exe file does not show up. Anyone know how to fix this? Thanks!

   Reply
   • Linerd says:

     August 16, 2011 at 3:11 PM

     IIRC, when you boot to FreeDOS, it drops you to a C: prompt. The files on your flash drive will actually show up under the A: drive, so just issue the a: command to change to the the A: drive, then you should see your firmware.exe file.

     Reply
6. Kim Mason says:

   December 16, 2011 at 12:54 AM

   After messing around for over an hour trying to make a bootable USB stick in Fedora to update my BIOS, I found this page, and it was done in less than 20 minutes. Absolute life-saver (my BIOS was revision A04, with all kinds of problems, and the latest is A11 - big changes!).

   In my case, I found that placing the BIOS update executable on the USB stick allowed it to be accessed from C: drive after booting the stick (i.e. the stick boots onto A: drive. To get to C: drive, simply type "C:". Then you can type "dir" to see the files).

   Reply
7. Felix says:

   July 28, 2012 at 11:19 AM

   After having a lot of trouble with failing to boot from flash drive eventually solved by removing all flash partitions and formatting whole drive as EXT4. Than removed that and created 2 new partitions, one FAt16 to hold the floppy image and then to get more space I created another one FAT32 of 20MB. The second partition could be accessed by D:.

   Sounds easy now but a lot of messing about to get there.

   Reply
   • Linerd says:

     July 28, 2012 at 11:24 AM

     Thanks for the tips.

     Reply