LiLi USB Creator – Review

Thanks to the latest developments, Windows users no longer fall victim to stability issues as often as they used to; and if glitches prevent booting into the operating system Microsoft troubleshooting utilities are available at boot time or on the Windows installation media.

However, it can still happen to need some data stored into a safe location before restoring the operating system to an earlier state by applying a backup image or through a different method; and for this you can rely on a Linux distribution to gain access to the files and copy them to a safe spot.

LiLi USB Creator is a tool for Windows allowing the creation of a live USB drive you can boot from and reach the data you need. The application is easy to use and does not require any special knowledge to work with.

It is free and also available as a portable download, so no installation is required. Its interface is not exactly what you’d expect from such a program as the application window is transparent, with clear spaces between the sections, allowing you to see the window behind it.

Nevertheless, this should not be an impediment as the steps to be taken to create the bootable removable drive are clearly indicated and if there is something wrong or conflicting with your choices a traffic light icon shows the red color to let you know.

The steps necessary for ending up with a bootable USB drive include selecting a suitable USB device, choosing the source, enabling persistence and making some additional options regarding formatting the device and the visibility of the files (changes the attributes).

Selecting the Linux distribution might be the most difficult part in the program because of the extensive support available. The list is quite impressive, but most users would find that Ubuntu or more popular distributions are more than helpful.

Although touted as a tool for creating Linux bootable USB drives, LiLi USB Creator also has support for other operating systems and Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 or Server 2012 R2 are among them.

Unlike in the case of many Linux distros, where there is support live mode and for reserving persistence space for storing data on the removable drive, in the case of Windows the resulting drive can only be used to deploy the installation procedure.

For a Windows user, this is an asset because the entire operation runs much faster this way and replaces an actual DVD.

LiLi USB Creator can extract the operating system from ISO images, ZIP files or IMG containers (experimental) as well as from CDs. However, if you do not have the source files locally, it can automatically download them in the case of the most popular choices. Some of the downloads are available on the list with supported OSs, too.

One interesting option available in the program is the possibility to virtualize the USB drive, i.e. deploy the boot procedure in a custom portable version of VirtualBox. Internet connection is required for this feature to work, with the data being downloaded in the background.

Everything is prepared automatically so that all you have to do is run the result in the virtual environment.

We put this option to the test and we had a running Linux running on Windows in no time. Everything is stored on the removable drive. Making this choice does not affect booting from the USB drive.

If some of the settings are not okay, the application will inform that attention is needed in some sections and point you to them.

Building a live USB with LiLi should not be too much trouble even for beginner users.

LiLi seems like a tool designed with the beginner user in mind, but it has some options for the more seasoned as well. If you dive into the Advanced section of the Options menu, you’ll find plenty of parameters that can shape the application more to your advantage.

Cleaning, MD5 checking, hiding data, disabling persistence space or autorun can all be done from this panel with a single click.

The Good

The Bad

The Truth