USB stick

surya4friends · **Posted:** Tue Mar 23, 2004 5:27 am

Hi,
This is problem that am facing currently. My laptop don't have floppy drive. I am using usb stick, to use my kernel.
installer that am using makes floppy based installation work correctly, but when i install on USB drive, it don't work correctly.
laptop inspiron 1100, USB 128MB
design wise bootloader loads a os image (FS: FAT) any change needed in it? like interrupt or serivce routine numbers?

Please can anyone help: how to make usb stick bootable? or what needs to be done? may be some asm snippet will do.

Regards,
surya.

bubach · **Posted:** Tue Mar 23, 2004 5:35 am

i am intrested in this aswell..

Pype.Clicker · **Posted:** Tue Mar 23, 2004 5:44 am

USB sticks require a *HCI support and implement the generic 'USB storage' interface. I know SCSI is used atop of that USB interface, but i barely know more ...

I never heard of "booting' an USB stick. If it can be done, it's up to the BIOS to check and run it ... I guess from the point BIOS can look at 'virtual sector 0' of your stick for a '55AA' signature, all will behave as if the stick was a plain hard disk, but i never heard of BIOS interrupt for accessing SCSI disk either :-/

Solar · **Posted:** Tue Mar 23, 2004 5:55 am

I never really got the idea why people are always starting with a boot *floppy*. OK, OK, it might be easier than starting with a full-blown HD boot, but when you're doing a bootloader of your own, you aren't after the "easy" way anyway, now are you?

I used a floppy only for the proof-of-concept, and went for a HD-boot next. Then again, yes, I used GRUB... ;-)

proxy · **Posted:** Tue Mar 23, 2004 5:57 am

I believe some BIOSs do. I have two SCSI seagate drives which my computer can boot directly to with no special software, in my BIOS (from DELL) i can even directly select devices on my SCSI bus as bootable individually.

Thought you probably need a SCSI card with certain features for this to even be an option. I have heard of USB sticks being bootable before too, but I've heard it's kinda hit or miss on whether it actually works.

proxy

mystran · **Posted:** Tue Mar 23, 2004 9:42 am

Indeed, there are bootable USB sticks, but you need support from both BIOS, and the Stick, and not all BIOSes and Sticks support that. I'd claim that most don't.

Pype.Clicker · **Posted:** Tue Mar 23, 2004 9:59 am

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=U ... gle+Search
looks to worth the look

ASHLEY4 · **Posted:** Tue Mar 23, 2004 12:41 pm

As far as i understand it some bios do support it other do not, some usb stick are floppy emulat's and some harddrives.

Here is how you boot from a usb stick for a smal linux dis:

"You can try the other USB Boot Options (Floppy, CD-ROM, Harddisk), if still nothing happens you might have to enable USB Keyboard Support in your BIOS (needed on some motherboards with AMI BIOS and a Via chipset, including Epia-m and Shuttle mv42n).

On some broken boards (like my Epia-M...) you need to plug the memory stick in without any power (remove your power plug), otherwise the BIOS might not recognize the memory stick."

ASHLEY4.

aladdin · **Posted:** Wed Mar 24, 2004 10:38 am

I m working on a usb stick bootloader, and i found that usb sticks have not in a standard FAT16 format, I'm looking for documentation related to this fat format, but i didn't found anything. all that I know is that most bioses that support booting from a stick uses the same procedure as booting from a floppy ...

Pype.Clicker · **Posted:** Wed Mar 24, 2004 11:04 am

that's not much surprising ... bootable CDROM also have a 'fake' floppy on their first 2.88MB or something. This will be the only area which the BIOS can acces and thus you have 2.88MB to store a system that will be able to access the rest of the boot device (be it a CDROM, DvD, usb stick or whatever)

ASHLEY4 · **Posted:** Wed Mar 24, 2004 11:37 am

To boot from a usb stick you need 2 thing's,
1)A memory stick that is bootable.
2)A bios that boots from usb device's.
Here is a list of usb sticks that are bootable:

Code:

          Manufactor 

Lexar Digital Film (Dell)                                 
Lexar Digital Film (Kingston)    
USB Disk Pro (Pendrive)                         
Transcend  (Jetflash)                             
IBM Memory Key  (IBM) Yes, but only with special IBM tool.
 

ASHLEY4.

unknown · **Posted:** Tue Nov 16, 2004 6:36 am

Hi...

I have a 6.1 cardreader..
I set the boot device setting to ZIP

And it works for me...

I download the boot files for a OS on <--website doesn't look to offer boot for download-->

And put them on my stick...

df · **Joined:** Fri Oct 22, 2004 11:00 pm **Posts:** 1076

it all comes down to the BIOS.. well and the stick

some USB sticks (like mine) have both usb-floppy and usb-hard disk chips so I can boot either. (my stick has a 1.4mb floppy space and the rest, 240odd mb as hd space. I cant change it).

your bios needs to support usb booting. some bios can do it via ZIP or via SCSI.

most bios dont have this function... if your bios has booting via usb option, maybe your stick does not have a bootable controller inside....

Nick · **Posted:** Tue Dec 07, 2004 1:03 pm

Can you tell me what the brand an type of your USB Memory Stiick so I can buy one. Tanks.

Pype.Clicker · **Posted:** Wed Dec 08, 2004 7:44 am

Nick wrote:

Can you tell me what the brand an type of your USB Memory Stiick so I can buy one. Tanks.

did you read Ashley's post ?

OSDev.org

USB stick

Who is online