Running HGST's DFT utility from a flash drive

[Celejar <celejar@gmail.com>]

Hi,

I'm tearing my hair out trying to get HGST's Drive Fitness Test utility
to run:

https://www1.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT

HGST provides an ISO meant for burning to CD, and an IMG meant for
burning to floppy disk. I don't have writable CDs or a floppy drive, so
I'm trying to get the software to run off a USB flash drive. I've tried
so many different things and wasted so much time, but have still not
succeeded:

1) Copying the IMG straight to a flash drive:

"Non-System disk or disk error
Replace and press any key when ready"

2) Copying the ISO straight to a flash drive:

The system fails to boot from it, and tries other booting options.

3) Running isohybrid on the ISO image:

isohybrid: dft.iso: unexpected boot catalogue parameters

3) Getting an image out of the ISO with:

geteltorito dft-xxx.iso  > dft.img

and copying that to the flash drive:

(as per the suggestion here:

https://johnleach.co.uk/posts/2014/03/01/booting-thinkpad-firmware-updater-from-a-usb-key/
https://askubuntu.com/questions/859202/make-a-bootable-image-on-a-removable-flash-drive-of-lenovos-ssd-firmware-update )

"Non-system disk ..."

(FWIW, although 'isoinfo' says that the DFT ISO file does contain an El
Torito VD, the ISO image when mounted is not empty, as those posts say
theirs are.)

4) Booting from UBCD, burned to a flash drive, and then running DFT:

I get the same errors described here:

https://www.ultimatebootcd.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2528

And so, I turn to the list for help: I don't have a really good
understanding of the boot process in general, and things like syslinux
and isohybrid in particular, but is there a general way to get a
bootable CD ISO image to boot off a flash drive? Alternatively, has
anyone managed to get HGST's DFT to run off a flash drive? Any
suggestions for what I should be doing here?

Thanks in advance,

Celejar