USB disk used to boot, yet now it doesn't

Forum: USB booting
Topic: USB disk used to boot, yet now it doesn't
started by: MikeHunt79

Posted by MikeHunt79 on May 05 2005,15:27

I've recently bought a Lexar Jumpdrive Elite (256mb) and it works fine. The thing is, when I first got it, it worked fine, and it booted like a charm. BUT, I then tried some experimentation to get DSL to boot from the drive, and in doing this, I know have a non booting usb drive.

This is probably because I deleted the main partition and re-created it.

Even if I format the drive (fat16) then write bootusb-0.8.img to it using winimage, it still wont boot... here's what it says when it tried to boot:

"remove media and press any key to reboot"

Anyone know what this means and how to fix it?

Posted by roberts on May 05 2005,18:01

The critical file is usually ldlinux.sys. You might want to try using the syslinux command to rewite/restore this file.

Posted by MikeHunt79 on May 05 2005,23:10

Hmm, I tried using a DSL cd to boot from and then I used the syslinux command to remake the file... It still says the exact same message tho... Is it possible I need to adjust the geometry?

Posted by roberts on May 05 2005,23:29

What does fdisk or sfdisk -l show as the current geometry?

If you can wait a few days, I am about to have a major update to the "install to pendrive" supporting both usb-hdd and usb-zip booting and no "higher" math needed. Since the "install to pendrive" downloads the install script, eveyone should be able to have the benefits without a new iso being created.

Posted by MikeHunt79 on May 06 2005,13:31

Hmm, I got the error message wrong... It says "remove disks or other media, press any key to reboot" when it's about to boot the OS. I think the drive is at fault since it says this even when the usb drive has been freshly formatted... I'll see what sfdisk has to say when I get home in a few hours, as I'm at work now.

I'm looking forward to the script btw... it sounds good.

Posted by MikeHunt79 on May 06 2005,14:45

ok, I managed to sneakily make a dsl cd while at work.

Here is what happens when i do a "sfdisk -l /dev/sda":

Disk /dev/sda: 31 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 0+ 30 31- 248976 6 FAT16
/dev/sda2 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sda3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sda4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty

EDIT: Does this look ok? Is there any adjustments I can do?

Posted by Caspar_s on May 06 2005,22:13

Nope, looks wrong.

According to the docs...
< http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/talk/node/86 >
it should be 32 sectors per track. (also I wiped all the partitions on mine - why they come standard with 4 partitions, three of which have no space is beyond me

)

Posted by MikeHunt79 on May 07 2005,11:28

Ok, I'll have a go at changint the geometry, it should sort things.... Thanks for the link.