bootable USB pen drive etc.

  • Thread starter Thread starter RJK
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R

RJK

Ages ago I made an old 256mb USB pen drive bootable, using HP's
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...=us&mode=3&taskId=135&swItem=MTX-UNITY-I23839
....( I think that was the utility )
"HP Drive Key Boot Utility"
....and used a 1.44mb floppy whose contents got placed onto the pen-drive,
and then I could boot from the USB pen drive, and run the dos *.exe prog's
that I'd put on it as wel,l of course.

Recently I've been trying to do the same sort of thing,
i.e. (XP Home ed. BTW) ...formatted a 1.44mb diskette as a boot-up floppy |
copied memtest's mt200.exe (precompiled *.exe), onto it
.....and used the HP utility - and fine ...I've got a bootable USB pen-drive,
and memtest is running.

My question is, on a PC with XP Home ed. running, when I plug in the USB
drive, two drive letters appear for it :-
B:\ and H:\
...H:\ being the next available drive letter on that system box, and B:\ I
guess is to do with ancient stuff where A:\ and B:\ are the same drive
unless two floppy drives are installed. ( My first PC had two 360k 5 1/4"
floopy drives and no hard disk ! )

....on the pen drive B:\ is 1mb in size, and H:\ is 1.44mb (which is the
bootable floppy image I suppose).

Have I got something wrong somwhere, having ended up with two drives on the
pen-drive ?
....and if so, how do I delete them i.e. repartition it etc ?

TIA

regards, Richard
 
RJK said:
Ages ago I made an old 256mb USB pen drive bootable, using HP's
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...=us&mode=3&taskId=135&swItem=MTX-UNITY-I23839
...( I think that was the utility )
"HP Drive Key Boot Utility"
...and used a 1.44mb floppy whose contents got placed onto the pen-drive,
and then I could boot from the USB pen drive, and run the dos *.exe
prog's that I'd put on it as wel,l of course.

Recently I've been trying to do the same sort of thing,
i.e. (XP Home ed. BTW) ...formatted a 1.44mb diskette as a boot-up floppy
| copied memtest's mt200.exe (precompiled *.exe), onto it
....and used the HP utility - and fine ...I've got a bootable USB
pen-drive, and memtest is running.

My question is, on a PC with XP Home ed. running, when I plug in the USB
drive, two drive letters appear for it :-
B:\ and H:\
...H:\ being the next available drive letter on that system box, and B:\ I
guess is to do with ancient stuff where A:\ and B:\ are the same drive
unless two floppy drives are installed. ( My first PC had two 360k 5
1/4" floopy drives and no hard disk ! )

...on the pen drive B:\ is 1mb in size, and H:\ is 1.44mb (which is the
bootable floppy image I suppose).

Have I got something wrong somwhere, having ended up with two drives on
the pen-drive ?
...and if so, how do I delete them i.e. repartition it etc ?
Click to expand...

One letter is the bootable image (the image of your floppy), the other
letter is the actual content of the pen drive.
 
Thanks, I sort of guessed that it was something like that, ...will have to
research this some more !

regards, Richard
 
RJK said:
Thanks, I sort of guessed that it was something like that, ...will have to
research this some more !
Click to expand...

No real research required. When you produce a bootable CD or memory stick
or practically any removeable bootable device, you have to create the
bootable part of the drive from a floppy disc (or an image of it on another
bootable device). The floppy simply get placed onto the CD (or whatever) as
an image file of the floppy (usually hidden but it doesn't have to be).
When you boot from the CD (or whatever) the image file is simply mounted as
an A: drive and then the PC boots from that image thinking that it is
booting from a real floppy disc. The A: drive image is visible (though read
only) once the boot has completed. If you have a real floppy drive it
becomes B:.
 
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