Wanted: Bootable USB Flash Drive

[BigV]

I am trying to create a bootable usb flash disk. I have what I reckon are all the right pieces, a usb drive with plenty of space (512mb), numerous tools to format, partition, and otherwise slice and dice the drive, choices of boot items, although ultimately, I want to boot to and load specific application. I have a system for testing whose bios will allow me to boot from a usb device. I have an .iso image of such an application, and when burned onto a cd, it boots just fine.

If I could arrange to have the usb drive (a flash drive, not a usb connected hard disk) formatted CDFS, I'd just copy the .iso to it and boot away. Sadly that did not work.

Have any of you successfully created (or bought or whatever) a bootable usb flashdrive? If I could make one, I would have an awesome diagnostic/repair tool I could carry around in my pocket. Yes, this could be done with a disc and that's what I'm doing right now. But I want to try to advance my toolkit. Ultimately, I would like to have a multi boot manager on the usb drive that lets me pick from among an array of startup choices. Then I could use the password recovery tool, or the disk image tool, or any of the myriad tools from the "ultimate boot cd", etc etc all on one usb drive. My leatherman for the 24th and a half sbs-bsb-sbs-century! [/Duck Dodgers].