A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Bootable FreeDOS Flash Drive with a Live CD

March 23, 2025

This comprehensive guide walks you through the process of creating a bootable FreeDOS USB flash drive using a Live CD. Whether you need FreeDOS for running legacy software and games, BIOS updates, or troubleshooting older systems, or maybe just for fun and nostalgia. The tutorial provides clear instructions on formatting the USB drive, preparing bootable media, and ensuring successful installation. With easy-to-follow steps and essential tips, you’ll be able to set up a fully functional FreeDOS environment on your flash drive in a couple of minutes.

Step 1: Preparing the hardware

Any flash drive… or external SSD, HDD, CD, DVD, tape, actually any data holder that you can insert into your computer. We will use a USB flash drive.
Computer with a running GNU/Linux operating system with root or sudo access rights.

Step 2: Preparing the software

parted: GNU Parted is a program for creating and manipulating partition tables.
unetbootin: Software to create bootable drives from GNU/Linux with an intuitive graphical interface.

In modern desktop GNU/Linux distros, these utilities very often are included in the box; if not, then it is easy to install them: Ubuntu/Debian

sudo apt install parted unetbootin

Fedora/CentOS

sudo dnf install parted unetbootin

Arch

pacman -S parted unetbootin

Step 3: Making bootable USB Flash Drive

Danger

THE PROCEDURE BELOW DESTROYS ALL DATA ON THE FLASH DRIVE, SSD, HDD, ETC. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Insert the USB flash drive into your computer; usually any modern GNU/Linux distribution can detect it automatically in /dev/sdb. Sometimes it might be /dev/sdb1, /dev/sdb2, check your USB drives carefully. In this article, we assume it is /dev/sdb.
sudo parted /dev/sdb mklabel freedos command to make label “freedos”.

Warning: The existing disk label on /dev/sdb will be destroyed and all data on
this disk will be lost. Do you want to continue?
Yes/No? yes
New disk label type? [freedos]?
Information: Don't forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary.

sudo parted /dev/sdb print display partition table.

Model: FlashDis Flash Disk (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 530MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
Information: Don't forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary.

This means the partition table is empty.

Now create a primary partition. You need to know the size of the USB flash drive you are using:

sudo parted /dev/sdb mkpart primary fat16 0 2GB

Make partition bootable:

sudo parted /dev/sdb toggle 1 boot

Step 4: unetbootin

Run unetbootin
Under Select Distribution, select FreeDOS. The Version will be 1.0.
Under Type, select USB Drive, and under Drive, select the partition, for example: /dev/sdb.
Once you click OK, unetbootin should download FreeDOS, extract and copy it to the USB flash drive.

Click Exit.

Step 5: Unmount the partition

sudo umount /dev/sdb

Congrats! Now you have a USB drive with FreeDOS that is bootable.

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