Thinkpads Forum

chackoc wrote:Unfortunately I don't think this is possible. Got the card, wrote the image to it, but I haven't found any way to get the machine to recognize that the card is bootable from the BIOS. No new BIOS entries and no new entries when I hit the ThinkVantage button and then F12.

Card looks perfect from within an OS, so it's not the card or reader. I think this particular machine just can't boot from the SD card. A bit disappointing but c'est la vie.

Totally agree with chackoc. Tried all but no result. I tested with a Silicon Power SDHC 16GB class 10 card. With Diskpart feature from Win7....did partition, activation & drive letter assignment. Then had the boot image from Thinkvantage recovery software....attempted many times but BIOS just ignores the SD Card reader. But, if the card is connected to the USB port through an external USB card reader adapter .....BIOS recognizes, boots and all goes fine....which makes sense as the USB option settings can be found in the BIOS settings. This only directs our assumption to the fact that T410 can't boot from the built-in SD card reader. Shame. Would have been mega if it could.

If we missed something to make that work.....please do tell....eagerly waiting. Really wanted this to happen. SD cards are lightning fast. And the new SDXC cards gonna be super yummy...

I think because of the way its wired into the board, its not going to show as a bootable option.

I would install a boot loader, say Grub to the hard drive and link that to use the SD card as the boot device, then you can set the hard drive as the primary boot device then have the SD card load what ever is installed.

Interesting idea on the bootloader. To work, you would have to first load the drivers for the SD card drive before the bios will recognize it as a legitimate drive and then boot from that drive.

Will Grub allow you to do that?