Creating a bootable DVD

The current activity as well as the next one will walk you through the creation of your very own bootable media. This activity will walk you through the creation of a bootable DVD, and the next one will cover the creation of a bootable flash drive. However, you only need to complete one or the other (not both). Whether you should create a bootable DVD or flash drive depends on your needs, what you hope to accomplish, and what kind of hardware you have.

Live DVDs are very useful boot discs that will work on the majority of computers made in the last several years. However, optical drives are no longer a standard requirement on computers shipped today. While most computers still come with a DVD drive, more and more computers are being manufactured without them. For example, if you were to buy an Ultrabook, a live DVD would be useless to you because few (if any) Ultrabooks come with an optical drive. At the time of writing this book, Apple has discontinued optical drives...