Booting from USB on X21

Message

tony6264 · #1 Post by **tony6264** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 8:17 pm

Am I reading things correctly here?....It sounds as if it is being said that A X21 can boot directly from a USB Cd-rom without having to load drivers from a external floppy first...is this true or will I need to hook up an external floppy like with the old 600 series?
I am picking up a X21 this week and was wondering how I was going to load the OS.

Terrahawk · #2 Post by **Terrahawk** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 8:46 pm

My X20 can boot from a USB CD-ROM drive so I can't imagine why an X21 couldn't.

tony6264 · #3 Post by **tony6264** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 10:23 pm

So you are saying that it has a setting in BIOS that can enable it to boot from USB?

Terrahawk · #4 Post by **Terrahawk** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 11:43 pm

Yes. There is a BIOS setting that allows you to boot from a USB CD-ROM drive. That's how I installed XP on my X20. You can find the boot order settings in the BIOS if you go to Startup and then choose Boot from the BIOS settings menu.

The Spirit of X21 · #5 Post by **The Spirit of X21** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 1:06 am

Note that these machines (X20, X21) will boot from USB CD-ROM or floppy, not just any USB drive (ie. USB flash drive). Terrahawk, is your USB CD-ROM an IBM?

Terrahawk · #6 Post by **Terrahawk** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 1:20 am

The USB CD-ROM drive I used is in fact a non-IBM USB DVD-RW drive.

nightyyyy · #7 Post by **nightyyyy** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 1:11 pm

Hello Terrahawk,

i used to have a X21 till some days ago, and in order to do a clean install of XP before selling i used a usb cd-drive.
Which did NOT work till i upgraded to the latest version of the embedded controller (i did also update the bios, but i am quite sure the controller update did the trick)

Hope this helps a bit

Nighty

Terrahawk · #8 Post by **Terrahawk** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 2:12 pm

Good point - I had upgraded the BIOS and embedded controller to the latest versions before I put XP on.

The Spirit of X21 · #9 Post by **The Spirit of X21** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 6:27 pm

Terrahawk wrote:The USB CD-ROM drive I used is in fact a non-IBM USB DVD-RW drive.

Fascinating. Have you tried booting from a USB flash drive?

Terrahawk · #10 Post by **Terrahawk** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 7:09 pm

I had tried that, and I managed to get that to work, after a *lot* of fiddling and downloading of various utilities. It was a while ago now so I don't remember exactly how I did it.

nightyyyy · #11 Post by **nightyyyy** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 1:15 am

The Spirit of X21 wrote:
Terrahawk wrote:The USB CD-ROM drive I used is in fact a non-IBM USB DVD-RW drive.
Fascinating. Have you tried booting from a USB flash drive?

Booted successfully from my old 512MB Trekstor stick!

The external CD-Rom i used was a a cheap one from ebay, 25€ including shipment. In Windows the drive's chipset is recognized as 'USB to IDE', the drive used is a 24x TEAC

Nighty

The Spirit of X21 · #12 Post by **The Spirit of X21** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 1:25 am

Terrahawk wrote:I had tried that, and I managed to get that to work, after a *lot* of fiddling and downloading of various utilities. It was a while ago now so I don't remember exactly how I did it.

If you happen to remember how exactly you did it, please post it. There were a number of people interested in this procedure, myself included. My X23 has a dock, but you never know when such knowledge might come in handy.

nightyyyy · #13 Post by **nightyyyy** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 1:29 am

I set the 'removable devices' to the top of the list in bios, but also used the F12 boot menu to access the boot device list. You have to choose removable devices there, not CD-ROM!

Nighty

This is the drive is used for my x21:
http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie ... 0091478389

The Spirit of X21 · #14 Post by **The Spirit of X21** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 1:58 am

nightyyyy wrote:I set the 'removable devices' to the top of the list in bios, but also used the F12 boot menu to access the boot device list. You have to choose removable devices there, not CD-ROM!

Nighty

This is the drive is used for my x21:
http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie ... 0091478389

Sorry, I actually wanted to know which utilities terrahawk used to make the USB flash drive bootable. Knowing which model of USB CD drive you used is useful nonetheless, so thanks.

Terrahawk · #15 Post by **Terrahawk** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 4:31 pm

I'm pretty sure I still have the utilities somewhere on my R40... hang on - I am mistaken! I have not booted off a USB flash drive on the X20, but I did that with the R40 in order to back up the hidden partition.

I never bothered trying it on the X20 but I am sure I can replicate the technique I used. That was mainly because I discovered that booting off our generic USB DVD-RW drive (it's a normal ATAPI drive in a 5.25" case) worked.

The Spirit of X21 · #16 Post by **The Spirit of X21** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 5:31 pm

When I had an X21, I tried booting from a USB flash drive using the HP boot utility without success. I guess that for the X20/X21, the good news is that one does not need IBM hardware to install data, though I still really wish that I could use a USB key (which, coincidentally, my T40 boots from quite well, the same as all R/T/X/4x.)

Terrahawk · #17 Post by **Terrahawk** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 7:43 pm

It was quite an effort to make my R40 boot from a USB flash drive - I had to destroy the partition table on the hard drive before it would even think about it. I wonder if I would have to do the same thing with an X20.

The Spirit of X21 · #18 Post by **The Spirit of X21** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 7:55 pm

Terrahawk wrote:It was quite an effort to make my R40 boot from a USB flash drive - I had to destroy the partition table on the hard drive before it would even think about it. I wonder if I would have to do the same thing with an X20.

Destroy the partition table? Wow! I had to use the HP boot utility to make my T40 see the flash drive, but I didn't have to wipe the partition table.

The topic of booting X20/X21 devices has been discussed here before:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=34545

Your findings have answered some of my questions, but I'd still really like to boot my X23 from a USB flash drive. Do you know of other boot utilities besides HP's?

tony6264 · #19 Post by **tony6264** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 5:50 pm

So do the X21's have a special port on them for the external floppy drive like the 600's do?
Is it the exact same floppy port?

Terrahawk · #20 Post by **Terrahawk** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 7:36 pm

I do not think that the X21 has a floppy port on it. My X20 doesn't, and since the X20 and X21 motherboards are swappable, it is highly likely that the X21 doesn't either.

To connect a floppy, you can either use s USB floppy drive or a port replicator, which does have the floppy port like the 600 series (this is how I use floppy disks with the X20). Another alternative is to use an Ultrabase X2 and a Ultrabay 2000 floppy drive.

tony6264 · #21 Post by **tony6264** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 7:46 pm

Do you think if I put the drivers for a usb cdrom drive on a flashdrive and had the flashdrive as bootable that would work?
I am only asking because the USB cdrom I have is a off brand and from what I am reading here I dont think the X21 will find it without loading its drivers.
The only other thing I can think of to do is to put the harddrive into another laptop I have here and load the OS to it and then put the loaded harddrive into the X21 and let Windows find the devices and finish installing.

Terrahawk · #22 Post by **Terrahawk** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 8:33 pm

I mentioned above that I had used a DVD writer in a USB 2.0 enclosure to boot my X20. It is not a big name brand device, in fact it is made from cheap generic parts. As long as Windows can use its mass storage driver with it, it should be fine and you should be able to boot straight from it.

The Spirit of X21 · #23 Post by **The Spirit of X21** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 11:34 pm

Terrahawk wrote:I do not think that the X21 has a floppy port on it. My X20 doesn't, and since the X20 and X21 motherboards are swappable, it is highly likely that the X21 doesn't either.

To connect a floppy, you can either use s USB floppy drive or a port replicator, which does have the floppy port like the 600 series (this is how I use floppy disks with the X20). Another alternative is to use an Ultrabase X2 and a Ultrabay 2000 floppy drive.

I can confirm that the X21 does not have a floppy port.

vincentfox · #24 Post by **vincentfox** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 1:28 am

While the USB bit is interesting, perhaps original poster is just looking for how to boot and install.

I find the "media slice" to be the useful thing to have for an X-series system. I picked up one with floppy and DVD-ROM off EBay for about $30. I eventually wanted a DVD-writer, bought a Lite-On slimline DVD-writer from Newegg. The IBM DVD-ROM is just a standard unit with a special rear-plate, and some rails. All these "extra bits" unscrewed and attached to my Lite-On drive and it works great. Okay, I did have to Dremel off a bit of plastic on the bottom right corner. No need to change the bezel in my opinion.

Nice thing about having a DVD-RW in my media-slice now, is I can run Acronis True Image and very easily write a backup DVD image of the system.

Aivarss · #25 Post by **Aivarss** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 5:11 am

I want say something , because I'm owner of X21 too. X21 has an floppy port but from ''back side''. There is port replicator and that have a floppy port. I connected floppy from my old and nice 560E and it's work fine. Cheapest one port replicator on Ebay with delivery to US is for 9$. Yes best choice is to buy Ultrabay with DVD-ROM, but not so often there is cheap offer with any optical drive at all.
And about to boot from USB CD-ROM. WinXP boots from USB CD-ROM without any problems. For example Hiren's BootCD , in my case, boot one time from 50. With USB drivers sure.

Booting from USB on X21

Booting from USB on X21

Who is online