How to make USB Pendrive bootable?

[MichaelD]

I have a 256MB USB pendrive.

I am trying to boot off it, like it was a Win98 bootdisk, so I can ghost a partition.

I formatted the pen drive (FAT32). I copied a Win98 bootdisk to the pendrive.

I tried all the different USB boot order settings (USB HD/Floppy/CDRom) and I keep getting a "Bad bootdisk" error.

This is obviously a PEBKAC/ID10T error.

Help please.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I haven't really studied this, but in the pen drive review I read at Ars Technica only some of the pen drives were bootable not all of them. Ars USB2 drives

On page 2 of the article, last para: "Some of these drives are also able to masquerade as USB-based ZIP or Hard drives allowing them to boot at startup. ..."

 

[MichaelD]

Thanks, DaveSimmons. I have the PNY drive. It only came with the driver CD for Win98, which I promptly tossed out.

Hmm. I must be doing something wrong...maybe I have to partition it?

I think I'll try that. BRB.

There's no option to create a partition on it, only to reformat.

Somebody must know.

 

[bacillus]

check out this thread

 

[MichaelD]

Thanks, Bacillus.

I currently have "Boot other device" disabled in the bios. Being that I could still see the option to boot from USB devices, I didn't think that it mattered that I had it disabled. Maybe that's it?

BRB!

Nope. Didn't make any difference. I wonder if it's a combination of HOW you put the files on the disc and BIOS settings?

For kicks, I looked in Nero to see if I could "burn" an .iso of the boot floppy onto the pendrive; no option for anything but which CD Burner to use.

Lots of good info in that thread, though. I'll get to all of the suggestions later tonight. Thanks again, Bacillus.