Maximum size of USB Pen Drives

Forum: USB booting
Topic: Maximum size of USB Pen Drives
started by: andyboyle

Posted by andyboyle on Jan. 12 2007,16:06

Has anyone sucessfully installed DSL to a 2GB USB Pendrive. Having used the guidance identified on the DSL website, if I try to execute the Syslinux command, I receive an error message saying that cluster sizes above 16k are unsupported. I have tried manually to format the usb drive with a smaller cluster size but to no avail.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

AJB

Posted by Juanito on Jan. 12 2007,17:19

You could try a few things:

1. Use a later version of syslinix, eg 3.2
2. Format the drive FAT32
3. Divide the drive into more than one partition

Posted by meo on Jan. 12 2007,22:05

Hi andyboyle!

I use a Sandisk Titanium 2 GB with DSL-Embedded and it works just fine. Just unzip it to the usb-drive and your'e good to go.

Have fun,
meo

Posted by andyboyle on Jan. 13 2007,19:21

In response to the last posting I have ensured that the Liinux version is the latest i.e. 3.31 but with the 2 GB Easy Disk usb stick I still receive the same message regarding the error in regard to the cluster size being unsupported.

I would appreciate your guidance on how you made the usb stick bootable.

Regards,

Posted by Juanito on Jan. 15 2007,02:56

I don't remember the exact post, but there was a detailed explanation for a USB stick on the number of cylinders versus number of heads, etc on the DSL-N forum that sounds like it would be relevant.

Posted by humpty on Jan. 15 2007,17:19

Boot with the cdrom or floppy+cdrom.
Use either the USB-HDD or USB-ZIP utilities that come
with DSL on the cdrom. They will format the drive properly (with a 2G limit).

Posted by andyboyle on Jan. 15 2007,17:30

Already tried this and found that the usb stick is unbootable.

Regards,

Posted by Juanito on Jan. 16 2007,13:55

I had the same sort of problems with a 1GB stick and DSL-L - you could partition the drive into several partions of, say, +/-512MB. This worked for me.

Posted by humpty on Jan. 16 2007,23:04

Quote (andyboyle @ Jan. 16 2007,00:30)

Already tried this and found that the usb stick is unbootable.

Regards,

USB-ZIP formats to boot from a 50mb 1st partition with the rest of the drive on the 2nd partition, so it's probably not a size issue.