Installing OS on USB Flash Drive

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tb

I got a USB flash drive that is formatted with FAT32.
Does this mean that a 64-bit OS cannot be installed on it?
I'm not much of a computer expert...
Thanks.
 
The 32 in FAT32 is really a different thing than the "bittedness" of an
operating system, so that technically presents no barrier. However, each
operating system has a specific set of file systems that they may use
for the system drive, and the only 64-bit OS that I know of that can use
FAT32 *might* be Windows XP 64-bit--but I'm not sure about that.
Click to expand...



Sure, XP (64bit) can be installed on a fat32 partition
however no version of Windows is designed to boot from USB
and it requires a "hack"

I've looked and thought it more trouble than it's worth.
The folks who have done it claim it's performance is rather terrible.

OTOH: I've installed Linux on a USB "thumb drive" and it worked fine
and was easy to do
 
Grinder said:
The 32 in FAT32 is really a different thing than the "bittedness" of an
operating system, so that technically presents no barrier. However, each
operating system has a specific set of file systems that they may use for
the system drive, and the only 64-bit OS that I know of that can use FAT32
*might* be Windows XP 64-bit--but I'm not sure about that.
Click to expand...

If FAT32 is an issue then the USB flash drive can be reformatted to NTFS.
I've done that on one of mine but that was to just to let me copy a larger
file.
 
philo said:
Sure, XP (64bit) can be installed on a fat32 partition
however no version of Windows is designed to boot from USB
and it requires a "hack"

I've looked and thought it more trouble than it's worth.
The folks who have done it claim it's performance is rather terrible.

OTOH: I've installed Linux on a USB "thumb drive" and it worked fine
and was easy to do
Click to expand...

Isn't the main issue simply whether the OS will let you boot from a USB
drive? I'm sure that XP couldn't care, or am I missing something?
 
Brian said:
Isn't the main issue simply whether the OS will let you boot from a USB
drive? I'm sure that XP couldn't care, or am I missing something?
Click to expand...

The keyword is "BootBusExtender". There are a few recipes around.

http://www.techspot.com/community/t...windows-on-an-external-usb-hard-drive.116114/

Without modification, I've read the boot fails, when the OS does a "reset"
on the USB bus, and promptly loses the ability to continue loading boot
data from the disk. The modification seeks to prevent that interruption,
by having the OS take control of USB, earlier in the process.

Then all you have to solve, is activation, and as long as you only
boot the one computer with it, you're fine.

Paul
 
GlowingBlueMist said:
If you mean can you load a 64-bit version of Windows on a USB and boot
your computer from that, the easy answer is no. The short answer is the
USB port gets reset while Windows is still loading from the USB flash.

On the other hand, if you mean can you install a 64-bit version of
Windows on a USB that can be used to install Windows onto a hard drive,
then the answer is yes. I believe the Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool
will reformat the flash as part of the ISO transfer but I'm not 100%
certain on that.

More on the Window-7-usb tool can be found at this rather long URL,
among others that a Google search will turn up.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/windo...d-disc-or-usb-flashhard-drive-from-iso-image/
Click to expand...

Yeah, sometimes when you get to this stage, the bar turns red.
And that happens, because the thing that puts the boot info
on the USB stick, fails (bootsect.exe).

http://www.mydigitallife.info/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/wudt-6.jpg

If you want the least trouble with that tool, try it from a computer
running 64 bit Windows. I think then, it wouldn't matter whether
the extracted bootsect.exe was 32 bit or 64 bit.

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.computer/msg/b76f3cf5373f06f4?dmode=source

Paul
 
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