[NTLUG:Discuss] Booting from a USB Flash Drive? ( 64Meg - $9.99 at Fry's )

[Jack Snodgrass]

On Mon, 17 Mar 2003 22:56:21 -0600, Steve Baker wrote:

> Jack Snodgrass wrote:
>> Anyone know if it's possible... ( not just theory ) but actually
>> possible to boot from a USB Flash Drive? I picked up a linksys
>> 64Meg Flash Drive from Fry's ( $9.99 after a $20 rebate ) and 
>> was hoping to be able to boot my PC with it, but it didn't seem 
>> to work. Do ANY motherboards support this? 
> 
> We use these flash drives a lot at work - they've come to
> replace floppy disks and CD-R's for a lot of work.
> 
> However, we've noticed that there are two distinct types - one
> of which seems to work with Linux out of the box and the other
> of which seems to require large amounts of complicated tweaking
> to get it accepted.
> 
> I got lucky and bought the Cig at r which works as a mountable drive
> out of the box.  (Although I've never tried booting from it)
> 
> Given this, it wouldn't suprise me to find that devices of the
> second kind might not work with some motherboards that claim to
> offer USB boot capabilities.
> ---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------

   I got the Linksys one SPECIFICALLY because it was supposed to work 
with Linux. I had read that some USB Flash Drives said that you 
could not have them attached to the system when you booted. That would 
make it hard to boot from. ;) The linksys one seems to be ok when you
boot, but my motherboard won't use it to boot. With RedHat 8.0 and 
the linksys USB drive, you just plug it in and you get /dev/sda with 
a fat-16 /dev/sda1 drive.

jack 

jack