USB Drive help

Forum: USB booting
Topic: USB Drive help
started by: Jared

Posted by Jared on Oct. 17 2008,02:53

I was following these (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Installing_to_a_USB_Flash_Drive) directions to create a live USB drive. I got to the forth bullet of "Installing" when I realized the hard way I should have checked my syslinux version first (stupid me, not reading all the directions) I now have a drive I can't mount and don't know how to fix. Any insights?

Posted by curaga on Oct. 19 2008,12:37

You can wipe the partition table and create a new one with:
cfdisk -z /dev/sdX

Then you can format the partitions with desired filesystems, and get back to mounting.

Posted by Jared on Oct. 20 2008,01:33

Thanks for the help. I'm off to mess around with my drive again.

Posted by tetonca on Nov. 11 2008,16:08

I'll be doing this again one day (possibly 'soon').

The one thing I convinced myself of (heh) is that when
running the shell script that grub uses to write the MBR
(or what-have-you) .. the *only* write-able drive on the
system should be that USB pendrive, and no other.

This means disconnecting cables from all other mass
storage present, except the (probably ATAPI) CDROM
drive.

Maybe this is old hat now; or maybe people don't
agree -- I'm almost certain that's how I did it.

Once the USB stick's MBR (and friends) are properly
GRUB'bed, then things can proceed more simply;
reconnect those cables to other devices (IDE bus
for the other hard disks). BIOS selects how the
system responds to presence of the USB stick.

In this way I had no problem dual-booting a VIA
EPIA ML6000EA either off an IDE flash drive or
the USB stick -- even blind (USB in, it boots; USB
pen drive out -- the IDE flash drive boots: no VGA
display connected, no problem).

Posted by Melvin on Nov. 14 2008,23:14

The easiest way to install Linux to USB drive is to use " UNetbootin - Universal Netboot Installer " ( http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ )

"
UNetbootin allows for the installation of various Linux/BSD distributions to a partition or USB drive, so it's no different from a standard install, only it doesn't need a CD. It can create a dual-boot install, or replace the existing OS entirely.
"