USB booting :: Problem with two DRIVE stick



Hello,

I have tried DSL-N recently and tried to copy it to my stick.
But both methods offered (Zip and HDD) failed: My device cannot be found (or mounted).

I assume this is a result of a special layout of my stick. This 4GB device is factory-preformatted into two DRIVES (not partitions! - I have checked this with various PartitionTools).

The problem with this setup seems to be, that one - namely the physically FIRST drive - is protected via a (Windows) password-utility. It can therefore only be unlocked after at least one boot under Windows. I like this feature and do not want to give it up. To make things even worse: this first drive is the larger one (ca. 3GB).  

Due to this any Linux has to be installed on and to boot from the physically second drive (beyond the 1024th cylinder).

Can that be achieved with DSL-N' in some way? Any ideas?

BR
aberlino

PS

FYI The only two Linux distris that did not fail so far have been Puppy and MCNL. Slax (and all derivates like Backtrack et al) may be installable but often do not boot on PC's which BIOS requires USB-Zip (do not accept USB-HDD). CPX-mini works too, but since it requires an ext2 file system I cannot use it, since I would lose my first drive (which could not be unlocked with the Windows file anymore...)
Did you use version dsl-n-0.1RC4?  Earlier versions had a problem with usb2.0.

Try plugging in the stick before booting dsl-n with something like:

boot: dsl dma base norestore

then click on the terminal icon and check the partition table with:

sudo fdisk -l

That might show an sda1 and sda2
or an sda1 and sdb1.

Personally, I always reformat those secure USB drives to remove the
Win-centric encryption software.  I have doubts about the security of
the closed-source software that they contain.
Hello rja,

thx for your reply!

Yes it is the rc4 I have used.
I will try what you told me later this day.

Btw.: I like this password protection. As long as TrueCrypt cannot be run without admin rights that is ;-)

EDIT: If I got it right, Linux seems to assume that my USB stick is a SCSI device!? Can that be?

original here.