Have a U3 jumpdrive? Then you might have problems.

Forum: USB booting
Topic: Have a U3 jumpdrive? Then you might have problems.
started by: Genecks

Posted by Genecks on Feb. 20 2007,02:09

I decided to mess aorund with the U3 jumpdrive today. It has a "smart feature," which seems as though it creates two partitions on the jumpdrive. To install DSL onto the jumpdrive, you'll probably want to get rid of those things.

First, you'll want to save all your data on the jumpdrive to another storage medium, such as a CD or hard drive. Don't forget to save firefox passwords and bookmarks and anything else which is important.

Secondly, you have to download the uninstall from the U3 website. Supposedly, removing the "partitions" can be done through their uninstall program, which can only run on Windows, which is a sucky scenario.

After uninstalling the U3 part of the jumpdrive, you'll want to format the jump drive into FAT32. This can be done by rightclicking on the jumpdrive's drive and choosing the correct option. There's tons of info on formatting something on Google if you need more information.

Somewhere before or after these events, you'll want to create a bootable floppy using syslinux. This is just a precauting incase the computer you want to use gives you crap at startup. In other words, you can tell the computer to boot from the USB from the floppy disk.

Next, you'll want to put DSL onto the jumpdrive. You could use the iso or the embedded version.

A lot of this informatino is on the wiki.

After all of this is done, restart the computer; put in the floppy and usb drive; and then use the "dsl fromusb" command.

After all that, you'll probably have a working, bootable USB jumpdrive.