OT: USB thumb/flash drives

[cakin]

I noticed that the prices for these little things keep coming down and the storage is going up. Can they be used instead of a floppy or hard drive for booting a seti instance?

 

[mastertech01]

I dont think you can boot to USB can you?

 

[JWMiddleton]

I've seen USB as a bootable option in some versions of the BIOS. What would you put on it? It is still pretty expensive to get one that is large enough for Windows. Plus, most are to the USB 1.1 standard and might have issues trying to run an OS. I would guess Linux as the best option, but would Linux support it?

 

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by: mastertech01
I dont think you can boot to USB can you?

the newest bios will boot to a USB device

compgeeks had some 128MB ones for $49.99 , and some 64mb ones for $29.99 , but they sold out of them, they still have some 32MB for $18 , but 32MB isn't very versatile

the DC'ers at Ars have a thread going about this -> linky

 

[Electrode]

Originally posted by: JWMiddleton
I would guess Linux as the best option, but would Linux support it?

Yes, it would.

 

[ProviaFan]

I've considered using a CF card in one of those CF-to-IDE adapters, but never really got around to trying it out. That would be the simplest method, which would work even with old computers that don't have USB ports. With a big enough CF card, you could even do WinNT 4 or something like that, though Linux would obviously be better. 🙂