Boot from USB???

  • Thread starter Thread starter gecko
  • Start date Start date
G

gecko

I didn't think you could. I know I never could when I had an external
HD connected to my USB. Anyway, my friend now has an older HP machine
he picked up, with which he is having a problem getting it to boot. He
says the BIOS states the 'boot order' to be USB Device followed by
Hard Drive (c:\). Strangely, so he says, when he put a bootable CD
disk in the CD Drive thereon, the system booted up from there.

Does all this make sense?

Anyone?

Thanks

Gecko
 
gecko said:
I didn't think you could. I know I never could when I had an external
HD connected to my USB. Anyway, my friend now has an older HP machine
he picked up, with which he is having a problem getting it to boot. He
says the BIOS states the 'boot order' to be USB Device followed by
Hard Drive (c:\). Strangely, so he says, when he put a bootable CD
disk in the CD Drive thereon, the system booted up from there.

Does all this make sense?

Anyone?

Thanks

Gecko
Click to expand...

Some computers have BIOSs which support booting from USB. It has been
like that for a few years and is now very common. You can get an idea
about how common it is in that there are complete operating systems and
application packages developed which fit onto a USB thumb drive to allow
safe portable computing while traveling and to allow recovery of damaged
systems. You can even do a shrunken bootable version of XP using Bart PT
and put it on a USB key.

Try a google search for "bootable USB key"
 
I didn't think you could. I know I never could when I had an external
HD connected to my USB. Anyway, my friend now has an older HP machine
he picked up, with which he is having a problem getting it to boot. He
says the BIOS states the 'boot order' to be USB Device followed by
Hard Drive (c:\). Strangely, so he says, when he put a bootable CD
disk in the CD Drive thereon, the system booted up from there.

Does all this make sense?
Click to expand...

Some systems aren't meant to boot from USB, some are meant
to but the support is buggy and mostly unusable, some are
able to boot from some USB devices but not others, and some
have better emulation and can boot from most things
bootable. Yes it makes sense, if you assume any particular
system and USB device may or may not work and that you'll
just have to try it and see. FWIW, modern systems are much
more likely to be able to do it than older ones.
 
I didn't think you could.  I know I never could when I had an external
HD connected to my USB.  Anyway, my friend now has an older HP machine
he picked up, with which he is having a problem getting it to boot. He
says the BIOS states the 'boot order' to be USB Device followed by
Hard Drive (c:\).  

Strangely, so he says, when he put a bootable CD
disk
Click to expand...

DISC

Common usage - (optical-disc, magnetic-disk)
in the CD Drive thereon, the system booted up from there.
Click to expand...

do you mean in the USB CDROM Drive?

Yes, it makes sense for a machine to boot from such a thing. Even a
machine that is a few years old.

It would be interesting to know if Any machine that can boot off this
USB thing can boot that USB thing. Or if they use the same method.
Different things to try are..
USB Floppy drive
USB CD drive
USB Hard Disk Drive, USB Key

Some BIOSs, may say CDROM and not USB CDROM, but it actually supports
USB CDROM.
Other BIOSs , may say CDROM and USB CDROM, but the USB CDROM may not
be visible initially. They can have many more booting options such as
USB devices, if you hold DOWN to scroll through the list. I recall one
BIOS that had a scroll bar that suggests there are no more(had no
scrolling thing in the middle), but it is a gimmick scroll bar. There
were more - including USB Key! (and the motherboard supported it)
 
Some systems aren't meant to boot from USB, some are meant
to but the support is buggy and mostly unusable, some are
able to boot from some USB devices but not others, and some
have better emulation and can boot from most things
bootable. Yes it makes sense, if you assume any particular
system and USB device may or may not work and that you'll
just have to try it and see. FWIW, modern systems are much
more likely to be able to do it than older ones.
Click to expand...


Thanks

G
 
I stand corrected.





Oh no - in his internal CDROM drive.
Click to expand...

ok..
So.
assuming he had a bootable active hard drive partition - so without
the cd in there the computer would have loaded up from the hard
drive.. probably gone into win xp.

Then, it sounds to me like quirky behaviour, either on his part or on
his BIOSs.
 
I didn't think you could. I know I never could when I had an external
DISC
Click to expand...

Why does he have to use upper case? What's wrong with lower case? Oh and
disk and disc are synonyms
Common usage - (optical-disc, magnetic-disk)


do you mean in the USB CDROM Drive?
Click to expand...

No he meant his CD Drive - its the name we use for a drive that can read
Compact Discs.
 
From reading many web pages out there, I got the notion that a lot of
BIOS'es out there can boot from a "USB mass storage device" but have to
treat them as "removable media" devices. AFAIK, this implies that they
must NOT be partitioned (i.e. no partition table and signatures in the
first few sectors).

My conjecture is that this causes failures for a lot of people, because
for large USB hard disks, Windows (the NT family) requires that you
partition them before you can format them.

I have seen how Linux can circumvent this problem because you can format
a raw hard disk as a whole, in the same way you can format an individual
partition. Windows OS's don't allow that (because we users are too dumb
to know what we're doing).

Anybody can confirm or refute my rant? :)
 
super_copy said:
From reading many web pages out there, I got the notion that a lot of
BIOS'es out there can boot from a "USB mass storage device" but have to
treat them as "removable media" devices. AFAIK, this implies that they
must NOT be partitioned (i.e. no partition table and signatures in the
first few sectors).

My conjecture is that this causes failures for a lot of people, because
for large USB hard disks, Windows (the NT family) requires that you
partition them before you can format them.

I have seen how Linux can circumvent this problem because you can format
a raw hard disk as a whole, in the same way you can format an individual
partition. Windows OS's don't allow that (because we users are too dumb
to know what we're doing).

Anybody can confirm or refute my rant? :)
Click to expand...
well.... I allowed usb support in bios, and to my big surprise,
my usb mouse and usbdrive (3 partitions), turned up as mouse/drives
in a DOS 6.22 boot floppy, making my GHOST 2003 work like a charm. :)
(Motherboard MSI 865PE Neo2-P)
 
From reading many web pages out there, I got the notion that a lot of
BIOS'es out there can boot from a "USB mass storage device" but have to
treat them as "removable media" devices. AFAIK, this implies that they
must NOT be partitioned (i.e. no partition table and signatures in the
first few sectors).
Click to expand...

It is manditory that there be a partition table for there to
be one partition. It is manditory that there be one
partition to have a bootable filesystem to boot to it.
My conjecture is that this causes failures for a lot of people, because
for large USB hard disks, Windows (the NT family) requires that you
partition them before you can format them.
Click to expand...

It is false. It is not possible to format a drive that has
no partitions.

I have seen how Linux can circumvent this problem because you can format
a raw hard disk as a whole, in the same way you can format an individual
partition. Windows OS's don't allow that (because we users are too dumb
to know what we're doing).

Anybody can confirm or refute my rant? :)
Click to expand...

Refuted.

The most compatible configuration for a bootable device is
having one partition and FAT (not FAT32) filesystem.
Naturally this would limit it to devices of 2GB or less.
It's only "most" compatible, doen't mean nothing else will
work with more robust bios.

Some bios and controllers just get along better. For
example I have a multi-in-one card reader that one board can
boot to a SD flash card (after partitioned and formatted
DOS bootable). Same board, same
already-demonstrated-bootable SD flash card but a different
multi-in-one card reader won't boot.
 
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