ASROCK 939NF4G motherboard

  • Thread starter Thread starter bryce.dooley
  • Start date Start date
B

bryce.dooley

Hi,

I'm a hardware newbie and I'm reading the specs for this board and
cannot tell if it will boot from a USB device. Does anyone know? If
so, what is the giveaway in the manual indicating this?

Thanks,
Bryce
 
Come to think of it, I should've been more clear. I'd like to build a
system, my first one ever, and I was thinking I could avoid buying a
floppy since they are antiquated and I could also avoid buying a cd/dvd
internal drive since I have a nice external one (USB).

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Bryce
 
Come to think of it, I should've been more clear. I'd like to
build a system, my first one ever, and I was thinking I could
avoid buying a floppy since they are antiquated and I could also
avoid buying a cd/dvd internal drive since I have a nice external
one (USB).

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...

Put in the floppy. It costs about $10, and is invaluable when you
really need it.

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Hi CB,

Would I be able to boot from a floppy then use my external USB cd/dvd ?
If I can do that, I'm all set! :)

-bd
 
Hi CB,

Would I be able to boot from a floppy then use my external USB cd/dvd ?
If I can do that, I'm all set! :)
Click to expand...


Do you need to transport this external drive elsewhere? If
not, you might as well put the drive in the system. It will
perform better in the system and eliminate some wasted
power, cable clutter, and cool it better. Granted optical
drives don't need a lot of cooling but their bottom plates
are 'sunk to the chips and they will do best in the long run
to stay cooler, as it helps the cheap bronzed bearing motors
and belts most use for the tray mechanism.

As for how to know if it support booting USB, most any board
made in the past few years does support it "in theory". In
practice, some have bugs... rarely I'll find a USB
thumbdrive will boot but a system will have had to be turned
off first, not rebooted (reset) warm for it to work for
example. Other times the specific external device may
matter, often a system won't boot from one of those
zillion-in-one USB card readers but will from a single-slot,
single card reader.

Point being, you can assume there was the option in the bios
to USB boot, but until you actually try it with your
devices, it is a bit of a lottery. Odds are good it will be
able to, if ever these external devices have shown bootable
with *any* board, but in the end it comes down to trying it
to be sure. Even so, a USB floppy isn't really much of a
substitute for an internal, since floppies aren't used so
much for transportation of files anymore as they are for
more utilitarian purposes such as flash bios recovery (which
REQUIRES an internal floppy, even a bootable (working to do
so normally) external floppy drive will not work.

You can live without the internal floppy though, but at the
first moment it seems one would've been useful, that some
workaround would be needed, that'd be a good time to go
ahead and buy one. It's only $8 or so, hardly worth the
savings when looking at building a system for long term use
(especially considering the drive is reusable with the next
board/CPU/etc, it's not necessarily a continual replacement
item if the environment isn't very dusty).
 
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