is it possible to boot off a usb external cdrom drive?

[Red Squirrel]

I have a delima with my main server, because there is 3 IDE drives, both IDE cables have to go low, so its physically impossible to hookup a CDROM drive. I've been running without one since I installed the OS. I want to image my OS drive in case of disaster, but can't because of this.

They don't make cables long like I would need for this situation. So would it work to put the acronis disc in an external drive/enclosure? Is it even possible to boot off those?

 

[Ika]

Can you use a SATA DVD/CD burner? I don't know if CD burners come in SATA flavors but a DVD burner will not cost you very much, around $30-40.

 

[Red Squirrel]

There is a sata interface, so that could work. Do they make adaptors for IDE drives? I have like 3 IDE CDROM drives that I want to put to use before I start buying more, but if worse comes to worse I can always buy a sata one I suppose.

 

[Peter]

Booting off USB devices is technically possible - the board's BIOS must support it, that's all. Generally, the USB support in recent AMIBIOS implementation boots from pretty much anything USB. Phoenix BIOS is a bit more picky, and Award is not so good at it.

Oh, and the word is "dilemma", thanks

 

[Old Hippie]

Do they make adaptors for IDE drives?

You're probably looking for something like this. I've never used one, but all the reviews say they're "iffy".

Good Luck!

 

[Red Squirrel]

Hmm cool to know.

Though I'll play around to see if I can put acronis on a USB key. Would this be possible? Acronis has an option to make a boot ISO or burn directly to CD, so if I make an ISO, is there a way to "burn" it on the USB as if it was a CD? (most likely changing the file system in the process, but I can deal with that)

 

[Peter]

Nope, ISO image files are bootable from CDROM drives only. So your USB stick would have to identify as a CDROM, not a 'disk' drive.

There are a few sticks that do this, but they're rare, and they usually have a static CD image loaded there. For example, some WLAN sticks have a secondary 'CD' function that auto-installs the WLAN drivers when first plugged in.

Since of course your board's BIOS would still have to support booting off a USB CDROM (real or pretend), you haven't won anything.

USB-IDE adapters are a dime a dozen, and that's exactly what's in an 'external' USB DVD drive anyhow. Your best move is to buy an external 5.25" case, and put your DVD drive of choice into it.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah guess thats the best bet then, I'll have to look around for an enclosure or even just an adapter.

 

[Linflas]

If you have a workstation available that recognizes USB devices at the BIOS level you can actually use FDISK to mark the partition on a USB stick (assuming FAT or FAT32) active and sys a DOS OS onto it just like a hard drive. The trick is to disconnect all the HD's temporarily or they will be detected at boot and FDISK will say that there is already an active partition available. I have been playing around with this quite a bit at work before the Christmas break and there are utilities available that will make a FAT32 USB stick boot into Linux as well. There are even some drivers available to do what you want to do, you would just have to configure the boot image section of the bootable CD using ISOBuster or similar utilities. Unfortunately I don't go back to work until Thursday and I have all the links for the stuff I have found on my machine there.

 

[0roo0roo]

pci ide cards are cheap esp pata. ~20 bucks gets you two more ports.
no reason to be restricted to two hd cables at all. i have 2 optical 4 hd's connected to my pc right now.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Is it even possible to have more then 4 IDE devices? I thought you were limited to 4 no matter what. Primary master, primary slave, secondary master, secondary slave. So does it go third master, third slave and so on? So it would be /dev/hde ?

If I can manage to find such card its definably my best option, so I can have a permanent cdrom drive in there.

 

[Peter]

You can have as many storage channels as you want, and that includes IDE and SATA. Legacy IDE compatibility is restricted to the first two channels - but if you're not going to install a stoneage operating system, this doesn't matter. Recent OSes can run storage interfaces in "native PCI" mode no problem.

Add-on PCI IDE/SATA cards will always run in "native PCI" mode, bring their own boot support BIOS extension and driver set.

If you're using a Linux old enough to still use /dev/hdX for IDE, then yes, the drive on 3rd channel master will be /dev/hde.

More recent Linux distributions dispose of the old IDE drivers and use the newer "libata" drivers. These hook into the SCSI framework, so that all storage drives are (finally!) unified in /dev/sdX for disks and /dev/srX for CD/DVD.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Got one of those cards, I'm good to go now.

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
Acronis has an option to make a boot ISO or burn directly to CD, so if I make an ISO, is there a way to "burn" it on the USB as if it was a CD? (most likely changing the file system in the process, but I can deal with that)

This is somewhat confusing because of your use of ISO. Acronis TrueImage will prepare a bootable flash memory device that will be operable just as their bootable CD Rescue disks are. I use mine all the time. As long as your BIOS supports booting from a USB port, it works just fine.

But, it is not an ISO file, it is the final bootable product. Here is the contents of my Acronis prepared bootable USB flash memory device:

bootmenu.exe
bootmenu.xml
bootwiz.cfg
bootwiz.sys
icon4.png
icon8.png
icon_48.png
kern3.dat
ramd6.dat
menulogo.png
mouse.com
ramd2.dat
ramd6/dat
spla1.run
spla2.run

I use this boot device with my laptop when I am cloning the hard drive to a second HDD in the Ultrabay. This requires that the DVD/CD drive be removed, and in order to get a good non-Windows boot to the great Linux-based Acronis GUI, I boot with my little Lexar Jump Drive.

In order to make it bootable with my BIOS, the Lxar had to be formatted to FAT.

But, it works like a charm, and the whole enchilada fits on an old 512 MB JumpDrive.

 

[Red Squirrel]

yeah but mine does not have that option, it just has create ISO or burn directly to CD, so thats why I had asked if I could put the ISO on the flash stick.

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
yeah but mine does not have that option, it just has create ISO or burn directly to CD, so thats why I had asked if I could put the ISO on the flash stick.

What version of TI are you using? Version 11 has that option built in, and it becomes available when it "sees" appropriate flash media.

Creation of an ISO file is not an option in TI. But, with other software, you might be able to do it from the TI Prepared Rescue CD.

Creation of the bootable flash media is format sensitive as well. It will not work with NTFS format.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Using 11. So the option only appears if the flash drive is inserted? That I did not know. I'll have to try that next time. I had just checked to see if option was there but never inserted it.

I ended up buying an IDE card for that server and put a CDROM drive, so I solved my issue, but good to know for next time I run in this situation.