SanDisk Cruzer Titanium 4GB does not boot!

[Navid]

I have a Kingston 1GB Data Traveler USB flash drive. I can make it bootable and can boot to it.

I do the exact same thing to my 4GB Cruzer Titanium. But, it does not boot on the same PC.

Why is that?

Have you any similar experiences?

Can you make any suggestions for resolving this?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

You are comparing two different USB thumb drives to see if they do the same thing? It might be that the Cruzer is not bootable, possibly from the CD-ROM drive (unless you've killed the U3 setup on it). EDIT: Just offering ideas, I haven't messed with either of those thumb drives.

 

[Navid]

Thanks for the reply, which reminded me I did not provide all the details.

I used Acronis True image version 10 and created bootable rescue media. Used the flash drive option. That is how I made each drive bootable.


Before making Cruzer bootable, I removed the U3 software from it using the official uninstall utility.
http://www.u3.com/uninstall/


To boot, I reboot the PC and press F12 to get to the (Gigabyte) boot menu.
Then, select USB-HDD as the boot option. Works for Kingston, but not for SanDisk!



These are the boot options from the motherboard manual.

Floppy Select your boot device priority by Floppy.
LS120 Select your boot device priority by LS120.
Hard Disk Select your boot device priority by Hard Disk.
CDROM Select your boot device priority by CDROM.
ZIP Select your boot device priority by ZIP.
USB-FDD Select your boot device priority by USB-FDD.
USB-ZIP Select your boot device priority by USB-ZIP.
USB-CDROM Select your boot device priority by USB-CDROM.
USB-HDD Select your boot device priority by USB-HDD.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

As per arstechnica.com this drive is not bootable, but I was able to make it bootable and was able to boot. I used the known HP utiltiy; you do need a version of DOS so do make a DOS diskette handy

link

Looks like it might take a bit more work to get it bootable compared to another USB thumb drive.

 

[corkyg]

Check the format. I have found that flash drives don't often boot unless they are FAT 16. I have never gotten an NTFS one to boot.

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: corkyg
Check the format. I have found that flash drives don't often boot unless they are FAT 16. I have never gotten an NTFS one to boot.

Thanks for the response.

I have tried Kingston only with FAT and it has worked.
I have tried Cruzer with FAT32 and FAT and neither has worked.

 

[Navid]

I noticed that at the boot time in the boot menu, Kingston does not show under hard disks but SanDisk does!

Kingston boots if USB-HDD is selected.
SanDisk does not show if it is selected under the hard disks or if USB-HDD is selected.



I converted the partition on SanDisk to active and that made it not show up under the hard disks anymore.
It then booted as USB-HDD.

To make it active, opened a command window and typed diskpart (under Vista 64).

To see all the disks, typed: list disk.

SanDisk was disk 3.

To select it, typed: select 3.

To select the partition, typed: select partition 1.

To make it active, typed: active.


Got these commands from this link.




Anyway, I don't know why Kingston does not need to be active and SanDisk does. But, I am writing this in case someone else runs into a similar problem, this may help.