Hardware or Software Question? I'm Not Certain

[BobH]

One of the things I've been considering is buying a flash drive of sufficiently large capacity to put my OS (Win XP Pro SP3) and a number of tools (AV, malwarebytes, CCleaner, Defraggler, HDD, Spybot Search & Destroy, Lavasoft Adaware, et al) on it. It times of problems it seems that one could boot to the BIOS setup and set the USB flash drive port as boot device then boot up with the os and tools already installed in that os so that repair could proceed.

First, can someone tell me how to determine how much room the OS takes up (so i'll know what the smallest flash drive would need to be).

Second, what solution software would you put on the flash drive?

Third, how would one go about building the flash drive with operable OS and software on it?

This is tantamount to building an Ultimate Boot CD, I guess, but I'm more likely to carry a flash drive around with me than a CD. AND, CD drives are a bit more mechanical and therefore more likely to fail blocking use of the UBCD (DAMHIKT).

Finally, if this has already been done and flash drives are out there a la UBCD's; please rub my nose in it and point me in the right direction.

[StuartR]

There's lots of good advice out on the web. Here are a few articles to get you started:

• Beginners Guides: USB Memory Drive Projects
• Windows In Your Pocket
• Carry an entire operating system in your pocket