how many os can i put on a 8gb usb flash drive?

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fr0zenmon · #1 Post by **fr0zenmon** » Thu May 08, 2008 3:33 pm

also, which 0s's fit on usb drives? can i partition the drive? I already know about puppy linux and ubuntu. But what about mac and win xp?

aaa · #2 Post by **aaa** » Thu May 08, 2008 4:12 pm

I think the issue is getting a useful XP on a usb drive in the first place. Doesn't XP kind of "bind" to a certain machine driver and activation-wise? What's the point of having it if it only works on one machine?

Other than that, the only other limit is space. Yes, you can partition a usb drive.

aaa · #3 Post by **aaa** » Thu May 08, 2008 6:26 pm

On second thought, BartPE might be interesting.

bobbarker · #4 Post by **bobbarker** » Fri May 09, 2008 8:27 am

BartPE is an option, but it's far from a real XP install and is useful only for recovery/repair needs. The GUI isn't the same and it doesn't really resemble XP.

K0LO · #5 Post by **K0LO** » Fri May 09, 2008 12:36 pm

fr0zenmon:

I have VistaPE, Knoppix, PartedMagic, and DOS on a 2 GB drive. On another 2 GB drive I have Kubuntu 8.04 Live (with persistence) and BartPE. Grub4DOS is used as a boot manager (or you can use plain GRUB).

On an 8 GB drive the sky is the limit.

Volker · #6 Post by **Volker** » Fri May 09, 2008 2:20 pm

Since the makers of XP and OSX don't want you to install to a flash drive, the chances of making it work are slim.

However, booting into linux and then running other stuff in a virtual machine will work. That actually sounds like a fun project

richarddd · #7 Post by **richarddd** » Fri May 09, 2008 8:34 pm

k0lo wrote:I have VistaPE, Knoppix, PartedMagic, and DOS on a 2 GB drive. On another 2 GB drive I have Kubuntu 8.04 Live (with persistence) and BartPE. Grub4DOS is used as a boot manager (or you can use plain GRUB).

How did you partition your drives for this? Any other setup hints?

K0LO · #8 Post by **K0LO** » Fri May 09, 2008 8:53 pm

richarddd:

You can use any of the popular partitioning tools to do this. My personal favorite is Acronis Disk Director, but Partition Magic (the bootable DOS rescue version) will also work. If you don't currently have graphical partitioning software you can download PartedMagic (a newer and improved version of GParted).

Command-line partitioners will also work; fdisk or cfdisk in Linux, or diskpart in XP/Vista.

PendriveLinux.com has lots of illustrated guides that you can use for ideas.

Playing around with these is a lot of fun. I've especially enjoyed VistaPE, which can be used for repairing XP or Vista PCs.

richarddd · #9 Post by **richarddd** » Sat May 10, 2008 6:00 am

Mark,

Sorry for the badly worded question. What I meant was what partitions did you make and what filesystems did you use? Did you use different partitions for each OS and program?

The last time I tried this, I had problems if I created more than one Windows compatible partition (fat, fat32, ntfs) on a flash drive.

K0LO · #10 Post by **K0LO** » Sat May 10, 2008 7:22 am

richarddd:

Sorry, I did misunderstand. The limitation you saw is only present in Windows. Windows will only see and use the first partition on a multi-partition flash drive, but Linux will see them all.

Here is the layout of one of my 2 GB drives, for example:

Primary 1 - FAT32, VistaPE, 750 MB
Primary 2 - ext2, Knoppix, 750 MB
Primary 3 - ext2, Knoppix persistent partition, 300 MB
Logical 1 - FAT32, Acronis bootable DD10 and TI, 75 MB
Logical 2 - FAT32, PartedMagic, 50 MB

If done this way you need to use a Linux machine to copy files to the partitions beyond primary 1, since Windows will not see them.

Perhaps the easiest way to do a multiboot USB flash drive is to use Grub4DOS as the boot manager. Grub4DOS allows booting directly to a file, for example:

root (hd0,0)
chainloader /ntldr

will directly boot XP. This differs from GRUB, which only allows chainloading to the IPL of a DOS/Windows type operating system, which usually will require a separate partition for each OS.

If done this way you can use just one big FAT32 partition on the drive and then put each OS in separate folders. The example above could have been done this way, and is probably the way I will do future multiboot flash drives. The advantage of this method is that you can plug the drive into a Windows machine and it will see everything, so the whole multiboot drive can be set up in Windows.

Check into Grub4DOS - it is quite an improvement over GRUB yet still can use all of the familiar GRUB commands.

richarddd · #11 Post by **richarddd** » Sat May 10, 2008 5:42 pm

I've been playing with grub4dos and like it. One nice feature is that it will boot an iso file. I boot acronis TI that way.

For some reason, I can't get it to boot Ubuntu. Ubuntu wants a root= parameter passed to the kernel. I can't find one that works. For the moment, I'm boot with syslinux, which boots grub4dos which boots TI.

If you have the chance, please post your menu.lst

K0LO · #12 Post by **K0LO** » Sat May 10, 2008 6:10 pm

This is a GRUB menu.lst (not Grub4DOS) but perhaps it will be helpful. It is also for booting the Live USB version of *buntu:

# menu.lst - Customized for Kubuntu Live Desktop 8.04 KDE 4 Remix
# MJW 29 Apr 2008

default 0
timeout 3
color white/red yellow/blue

title Kubuntu 8.04 Live Desktop (Persistent)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /casper/vmlinuz boot=casper ramdisk_size=1048576 root=/dev/ram rw quiet splash persistent
initrd /casper/initrd.gz
boot

title Kubuntu 8.04 Live Desktop
root (hd0,0)
kernel /casper/vmlinuz boot=casper ramdisk_size=1048576 root=/dev/ram rw quiet splash
initrd /casper/initrd.gz
boot

title Kubuntu 8.04 Live Desktop (Safe Graphics Mode, Verbose Startup)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /casper/vmlinuz boot=casper xforcevesa ramdisk_size=1048576 root=/dev/ram rw
initrd /casper/initrd.gz
boot

title Memory Test
root (hd0,0)
kernel /install/mt86plus
boot

K0LO · #13 Post by **K0LO** » Sat May 10, 2008 8:41 pm

richarddd wrote:I've been playing with grub4dos and like it. One nice feature is that it will boot an iso file. I boot acronis TI that way.

Could you tell me more about how to boot an iso file?

richarddd · #14 Post by **richarddd** » Sun May 11, 2008 5:30 am

Add to menu.lst:

title boot Acronis True Image
map (hd0,0)/ati.iso (hd32)
map --hook
chainloader (hd32)
boot

Include gldr in the directory with the iso file

richarddd · #15 Post by **richarddd** » Sun May 11, 2008 5:33 am

k0lo wrote:This is a GRUB menu.lst (not Grub4DOS) but perhaps it will be helpful. It is also for booting the Live USB version of *buntu:

ubuntu does not usually run in a ram disk, but I might try this to see what happens. Are you running knoppix from a ram disk?

Are you running acronis from an iso?

K0LO · #16 Post by **K0LO** » Sun May 11, 2008 8:53 am

Yes, Knoppix is run from RAM. This is a Grub4DOS menu.lst from the other flash drive:

Code: Select all

splashimage /boot/grass.gz
timeout 30
default 0

title VistaPE
chainloader /bootmgr

title Acronis Disk Utilities
chainloader (hd0,4)+1

title Knoppix
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/linux ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us apm=power-off vga=791 initrd=minirt.gz nomce noswap noprompt noeject quiet BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix home=scan
initrd /boot/minirt.gz

title PartedMagic
root (hd0,5)
kernel /bzImage noapic root=/dev/ram0 squashfs=/pmagic init=/linuxrc ramdisk_size=100000 skip
initrd /initrd.gz

title MemTest86+
kernel /boot/memtest.bin

title Find and Load NTLDR of Windows NT/2K/XP
find --set-root /ntldr
chainloader /ntldr

title Find and boot Linux with menu.lst already installed
find --set-root /sbin/init
configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst

title CommandLine
commandline

title Reboot
reboot

title Halt
halt

Acronis TI and DD are not run from an ISO; they are in their own partition and are booted directly. An easy way to set this up is to use the Acronis Bootable Media Builder app to create a bootable USB flash drive. Plug the drive into your PC and create an image of it using TI. Restore the image to the desired partition on your multiboot flash drive. The restored image will contain the Acronis IPL in the partition boot record and may be directly chainloaded. If you use a logical partition (like in my example above) then you have to change "hidden sectors" from the default 63 to the absolute sector number of the beginning of the logical partition using a disk editor in order for it to boot. No change is needed if using a primary partition.

Do you have a full install of Ubuntu on your flash drive? I had assumed that you were using the Live CD version.

richarddd · #17 Post by **richarddd** » Sun May 11, 2008 3:00 pm

I'm running Ubuntu live / persistent rather than a full install. Takes up a lot less space, if nothing else.

Ubuntu runs fine when loaded through ramdisk (thanks!) or when setting boot parameters properly. Acronis TI seems to run fine when launching from an iso.

K0LO · #18 Post by **K0LO** » Sun May 11, 2008 3:35 pm

Good! I am still intrigued by your ability to boot an iso image of Acronis. No joy here. The following are the commands used and the error messages (-->) returned by grub4dos:

Code: Select all

title Boot Acronis Disk Utilities
map (hd0,0)/ati.iso (hd32)  --> Autodetect number of heads failed. Use default value 255
                            --> Autodetect sectors-per-track failed. Use default value of 63
                            --> floppies_orig=0, harddrives_orig=2, floppies_curr=0, harddrives_curr=33
map --hook
chainloader (hd32)          --> Warning: Unrecognized partition table for drive A0. Please rebuild it using a Microsoft-compatible FDISK tool(err=14). Current C/H/S=9/255/63
                            --> Warning: Unrecognized partition table for drive A0. Please rebuild it using a Microsoft-compatible FDISK tool(err=14). Current C/H/S=9/255/63
                            --> Error 1:Filename must be either an absolute pathname or blocklist

The iso was generated by Acronis Bootable Media Builder. When burned to a CD it boots and runs fine.

I searched the 911cd.net forum for information about booting iso images from Grub4DOS and the consensus was that it can't work because of INT13H limitations, so I'm curious about what you did to make it work.

richarddd · #19 Post by **richarddd** » Sun May 11, 2008 6:20 pm

I'm running a current Grub4Dos with the menu.lst from a few posts back. The ati.iso file is an image of a bootable CD created by the full Acronis as a rescue/cloning disk. The only problem I had was that when I first put the iso onto the USB flash drive, it went in two fragments and grub4dos complained that the file was not contiguous.

Unfortunately, I don't have any insights into your error messages.

Are you using a very recent Grub4Dos build (they haven't changed version numbers in a while, but each build has a date)?

See #3 in http://www.msfn.org/board/Acronis-true- ... 16681.html

K0LO · #20 Post by **K0LO** » Sun May 11, 2008 7:42 pm

richarddd wrote:Are you using a very recent Grub4Dos build (they haven't changed version numbers in a while, but each build has a date)?

Bingo! That was it. My build was version 0.4.3 dated 2007-10-15. I downloaded the latest build dated 2008-05-07 and that fixed it.

Thank you for this information; being able to just boot directly to an iso image sure makes it easy.

how many os can i put on a 8gb usb flash drive?

how many os can i put on a 8gb usb flash drive?

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