Boot form USB Drive?

[Phibian]

Is it possible to use an external USB drive as a boot drive? jus curious.

 

[LouPoir]

If your motherboard suypports it as a boot device - yes

 

[cmv]

Sometimes you need the USB stick plugged in before entering the BIOS (before powering up) to have the option to add it to the bootable removable devices. Some also put usb sticks in the hard drives category which is uber dumb but it happens.

Anyone know of a floppy or iso that boots up and gives you the option to boot from a usb stick? Would be handy for the cases in which the BIOS doesn't support it directly or you don't want to fiddle with the BIOS.

 

[Pirotech]

Originally posted by: Phibian
Is it possible to use an external USB drive as a boot drive? jus curious.

check BIOS advanced settings, for first boot device, if there is USB option in the list, then you can boot from the USB external drive. also there are some boot manager which can detect USB storage devices and allow to boot from them.

 

[marulee]

Which motherboard would do that?

 

[tatteredpotato]

Theres lots of tutorials on how to do it, mostly using "damn small linux"

 

[Nothinman]

Sadly Windows won't let you install it to a USB drive so unless you're using another OS it's going to be a huge PITA.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: marulee
Which motherboard would do that?

about anything manufactured in the last year or two will do it.

Originally posted by: BlameCanada
Theres lots of tutorials on how to do it, mostly using "damn small linux"

I believe Debian also has a usb image.

 

[Nothinman]

I haven't done it myself, but I believe just about any recent Linux distribution should be able to boot and run from a USB drive just fine. The only requirement would be that the USB modules are loaded from the initramfs.

 

[Kelnoen]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Sadly Windows won't let you install it to a USB drive so unless you're using another OS it's going to be a huge PITA.

You can get XP booting from a 256mb USB stick

 

[Nothinman]

You can get XP booting from a 256mb USB stick

I'm sure it's possible with some work and probably just with a PE variant, but it's too much work IMO.

 

[Kelnoen]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

You can get XP booting from a 256mb USB stick

I'm sure it's possible with some work and probably just with a PE variant, but it's too much work IMO.

You can get an image of this from some places and I'm not sure it violates anything if you have your own key

 

[Nothinman]

You can get an image of this from some places and I'm not sure it violates anything if you have your own key

Yea, like I'd trust a copy of Windows downloaded from some random source on the Internet.

 

[Phibian]

Still, its a cool Idea.

 

[Nothinman]

If I had a need for portable Windows I'd be more inclined to just build a BartPE disc and carry that around, it'll be a lot more compatible and easier to build.