Patent ID: 8752039

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, by a network device, a bootable image file of a first operating system that is different from a second operating system being run by the network device, a first file system format of the first operating system being different from a second file system format of the second operating system, and the bootable image file including a binary file format that conforms to the first file system format; allocating, by the network device, contiguous space on a drive of the network device, the contiguous space having a size at least equal to a size of the bootable image file, and the drive being formatted according to the second file system format; copying, by the network device, the bootable image file to the contiguous space on the drive of the network device; modifying, by the network device, a master boot record of the drive of the network device to indicate, in the master boot record, that the contiguous space on the drive of the network device is a bootable partition of the drive of the network device; placing, by the network device, hardware of the network device into a pass-through mode that allows traffic to pass through the network device without direction from the second operating system; and causing, by the network device, the network device to reboot to load the first operating system.