DriveDroid – Boot your PC/Laptop from your android device

Hey all readers, today I will be sharing an android app DriveDroid that can help you create bootable drive directly using your android device. Yes, you heard it right. You can create a bootable device just by your mobile for running live versions of Linux as well as the installable windows version.

Drive Droid

DriveDroid is an Android application that allows you to boot your PC from ISO/IMG files stored on your phone. This is ideal for trying Linux distributions or always having a rescue-system on the go… without the need to burn different CDs or USB pen drives.

DriveDroid also includes a convenient download menu where you can download USB-images of a number of operating systems from your phone. You can also create USB-images which allows you to have a blank USB-drive where you can store files in. Blank images also allow you to use tools on your PC to burn images to the drive and create a bootable USB disk that way.

True CD-Rom emulation (For experts only)

Most phones emulate a USB stick when using DriveDroid. This is baked into the kernel of your phone. This means that only images that are compatible with USB sticks can be used. All IMG files will work, but not all ISO files will. Most modern Linux systems distribute their ISOs as hybrid files. This means the ISO files will work on a CD as well as from a USB stick. Other ISO files, like Windows, will not work as a USB stick. For these images, there are 2 options: converting them or enabling true CD-Rom emulation on your phone.

Converting images is for most people the best option. The author of SoftwareBakery has written a tutorial on how to convert those images to be compatible with USB.

Enabling true CD-Rom emulation on your phone will enable your phone to not only be a USB stick but also look like a real CD-ROM drive. This should allow you to boot any ISO file from your phone. To get CD-ROM emulation support you need to install a custom kernel or ROM on your phone that supports this feature. You can find out which ROMs do on the XDA forums under ‘True CD-ROM emulation’.

Links for DriveDroid :

• Google Play (Free version)
• Google Play(Paid version)
• DriveDroid Beta
• Changelog and downloads
• DriveDroid on XDA-Developers
• #drivedroid on irc.freenode.net
• Distributions downloadable through DriveDroid

Tutorials

• Installing ISOs on DriveDroid
• Boot Windows 8 from DriveDroid
• Windows installation on DriveDroid
• Install Hirens Boot CD on DriveDroid
• Shrinking images on Linux

Notes

• It requires a rooted Android system
• Some .iso files do not support being booted over USB, but most popular Linux distributions are. All images that are downloadable through DriveDroid are supported.
• Do NOT use it while your SD card is mounted (being used on your PC). This can cause loss of data.
• It requires support for USB mass storage on your phone. Most devices have this (even ones that do not use it by default). However, some phones or tablets have trouble with mass storage. If your phone or tablet does not seem to work with DriveDroid, send me a support email through DriveDroids preferences.

That was all for today. Hope you like it. Share your views and suggestions below. If you know any other app then comment and share with readers below. Keep visiting for more updates coming and also check out our older posts.