making a bootable USB stick for my x31

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pellicle · #1 Post by **pellicle** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 7:49 am

Hi

I can boot from a USB floppy (cheapie from eBay) but can't seem to manage making a USB stick bootable.

I'd like to try to sort this out as I'd like to be able to boot from another device to manage drivesnapshot backup and recovery.

my x20 had a floppy on the base station.

bobbarker · #2 Post by **bobbarker** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 7:21 pm

Make sure USB HDD boot is enabled in the BIOS.

weepy · #3 Post by **weepy** » Sat Aug 02, 2008 2:54 am

For XP try bartPE (google), for linux install linux

Brad · #4 Post by **Brad** » Sat Aug 02, 2008 7:31 am

On my X31 there is no option for a USB flash drive when pressing F12 on startup.

On later models I have successfully booted from a USB flash drive that I have installed Acronis. I use this combination to make full hard drive backups.

Brad

bobbarker · #5 Post by **bobbarker** » Sat Aug 02, 2008 2:03 pm

Maybe it needs a BIOS update? I've had two separate X31 mobos and both did USB boot just fine.

To the O/P:
If you still can't get USB boot you can setup a GRUB Floppy and normally point that to a USB drive.

Brad · #6 Post by **Brad** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 2:43 am

As far as I know my X31 has the latest BIOS.

I can boot from USB. A hard drive or CD but NOT a USB flash drive. The USB flash drive is not listed in the boot list when I press F12.

Brad

pellicle · #7 Post by **pellicle** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 10:07 am

Folks

my bios is 2.11 (1QET73ww) and as far as I know its the latest, its interesting to hear that others can boot from USB HDD and CD but not from stick.

looks like I'm suck needing a "drive out" solution using another machine to do snapshot restores.

Thanks

bobbarker · #8 Post by **bobbarker** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 10:33 am

Well, also do make sure the USB stick is "bootable". Without setting that your BIOS will ignore the drive entirely.
HP has a utility for doing this for windows users and for Linux users I suggest "syslinux". Part of the Ubuntu wiki has a good page on making USB drives bootable in Windows and Linux. Try that out and if it doesn't work maybe your USB stick won't play nice...maybe try a different one? I use the Sandisk Cruzer Micro (2GB) and I've never had a problem.

pellicle · #9 Post by **pellicle** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 2:30 am

Hi Bob

bobbarker wrote:Well, also do make sure the USB stick is "bootable". Without setting that your BIOS will ignore the drive entirely.
HP has a utility for doing this for windows users and for Linux users I suggest "syslinux". Part of the Ubuntu wiki has a good page on making USB drives bootable in Windows and Linux. Try that out and if it doesn't work maybe your USB stick won't play nice...maybe try a different one? I use the Sandisk Cruzer Micro (2GB) and I've never had a problem.

I've tried to use this utility (found it listed elsewhere) and all I get is a drive which is not formated properly. Not even my RHEL box recognises it. Perhaps there is something I'm missing on this

bobbarker · #10 Post by **bobbarker** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 3:16 pm

Hrpmf...

Try formating the USB disk to FAT and with whatever utility you use, set the boot flag to be on (gparted or fdisk). I think that is the key point of it all.

K0LO · #11 Post by **K0LO** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 3:34 pm

Since you have Linux, try wiping the first few sectors of the drive:

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx count=5

Replace sdx with the actual device designator of the flash drive.

After wiping, use gparted to add a standard mbr (disklabel), create a primary partition, and set the active flag on the partition. Then plug the drive into your Windows box and format the drive. Sometimes if all else fails then this will work. Some flash drives come preformatted with hidden security partitions for U3 or other schemes and the above steps will nuke these and set up the drive with a standard partition table.

#12 Post by **rkawakami** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 5:55 pm

Brad wrote:I can boot from USB. A hard drive or CD but NOT a USB flash drive. The USB flash drive is not listed in the boot list when I press F12.

My X31 running BIOS 3.2 (the latest) has in the Startup/Boot menu, an entry for USB HDD. When a USB bootable flash drive is installed, that entry can be expaned (highlight +USB HDD and press ENTER) and it should identify itself. You can also enable or disable booting from this device in that menu. When I press the F12 key, I see the same USB HDD entry. Perhaps your BIOS has the USB HDD excluded from the boot list?

making a bootable USB stick for my x31

making a bootable USB stick for my x31

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