Thinkpads Forum

I have Linux installed on a SD card which I move between a couple machines. I have been using a PLOT Boot Manager CD to boot the machine, which then finds linux on my SD card and boots it.

Is there any way I could have it directly boot the SD card every time? I thought about getting a cheap junky hard drive but just to load PLOP boot manager, that seems a little silly. However,

I know 32GB SSD's and such are cheap but if I'm trying to avoid really spending any money on it or I'll end up going for a full SSD... and the cheapest 2.5gb SATA drives on eBay are just as expensive as the SSD's on ebay half their size.

I've only tried booting from a SD card on a couple of Dell laptops. If found booting from SD to be really slow. I have a few USB 2 speed 32 GB USB keys loaded with different Linux distros and one for Win 7 install. I used USB 2 as I found some BIOS will not boot from USB 3.

Cigarguy wrote:I've only tried booting from a SD card on a couple of Dell laptops. If found booting from SD to be really slow. I have a few USB 2 speed 32 GB USB keys loaded with different Linux distros and one for Win 7 install. I used USB 2 as I found some BIOS will not boot from USB 3.

I was afraid this might be the case even if I got it to work.....


Perhaps some of those really tiny flash drive the size of bluetooth dongles is better for what i need.

I my books, booting from SD is maybe slightly faster than booting from CD. Not worth the effort. A USB key is worth the effort and are pretty inexpensive.

I got a few of these:
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX35652

I like it for the size but that too have a drawback. Because I have a few USB drives loaded with different OS, I like to label them. These are a pain in the b*** to label. My most used USB drive is a 4GB Patriot drive that is not useful for much else. It's loaded with Parted Magic.

I use Silicon Power 3.0 usb sticks under brutal use and recycling them often for usb boots. I have yet to boot in 3.0 mode.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

Cigarguy,

If you can't label, color-code, by tape, nail polish, or spray-paint.

My only reluctance to using a usb drive is it sticks out too much got easy couch use and travel, with the usb drive sticking out being a liability for loss or port damage. That is why the smaller form factor ones interested me.

Anyway, an update: I found an unused 320GB drive around, surprisingly. Put it in one of my spare caddies and loaded it with XP just in case I need an XP machine, which is occasionally. Used the latest KNOPPIX release to install directly to the SD card's partition. Boots with GRUB. Works perfectly for my needs. I can boot KNOPPIX 32 or 64 bit images from the SD card which has another partition for persistent storage. The Windows option boots XP from the hard drive.

You could hack something together with coreboot and embed the PLOT Boot Manager CD on the bios chip.

Alternatevily you could load PLOT onto any USB drive.

"Boots with GRUB."
Which device is grub installed on?

Cigarguy wrote:I my books, booting from SD is maybe slightly faster than booting from CD. Not worth the effort. A USB key is worth the effort and are pretty inexpensive.

If booting from a USB-based card reader, the speed with booting from SD will be just like booting from a USB key, i.e., dependent on the speed of the actual flash.

Hmm. so it really is the build in card reader that is the bottleneck, not the SD device itself.... interesteing.

Well as cool as it would have been to have an empty HD bay T500 booting from SD..... I guess that wont be happening anytimes soon

jaspen-meyer wrote:You could hack something together with coreboot and embed the PLOT Boot Manager CD on the bios chip.

Alternatevily you could load PLOT onto any USB drive.

"Boots with GRUB."
Which device is grub installed on?

Grub is on /dev/sda1 since I could not get it to load from /dev/mmcblk0p1