Other Help Topics :: USB key
Check out the forums and the documentation page for more details, but
the main difference between a poormans install and a frugal hd install is this:
poormans = copy the compressed image file over but do not install a bootloader like lilo
frugal = copy the compressed image file over AND install a bootloader. Also, uses the "frugal" bootcode automatically.
A frugal install is intended for an installation to a hard drive. It is also possible to do a frugal install to a USB drive if you can redirect the script to install to a properly setup USB drive sdax
This install to USB pendrive script will do one of two things, depending on your menu choices inside the script:
1) A USBZIP install, which will modify the beginning of your USB device to behave like a USB Zip drive. This is one way of making a bootable USB device if your computer BIOS supports USBZIP boot type.
2) A USBHDD install, which will reformat your device to behave like a USB hard drive that is formatted for the Linux EXT2 file system. This is needed if your computer BIOS supports the USBHDD boot type. Computers that can do both seem to like the USBHDD better because the USBZIP requires very specific drive geometry settings and it can sometimes fail to work for certain USB devices.
There are other (manual) ways to prepare a USB device for use as a DSL boot device but they require some experimenting by the user. For example, HP and Dell both provide a "Bootable USB key" utility program for MSWindows that can help you create a USBHDD system that can boot DSL frugal AND because it is a FAT filesystem it can also also be used for data storage when plugged into a MSWindows computer.
Hope this helps.
i have been wanting to make my USB drive bootable but didnt really want to mess around with the geometry, and now i can finaly format it as a USBHDD 
cool thanks for all your help!
is there any way of manualy downloading and installing the packages needed for the USBHDD install
i have the packages they are around 100kb
i have put them in the "/ramdisk/home/dsl/" folder but it seems when i run the script it doesnt have "permission" to write to my USB stick
any help anyone
regards
1nc09nit0
Making partitions, and otherwise setting up devices requires root access.
Try running the script as root, i.e., sudo pendrive-usbhdd.sh
i have hit another problem,
when i use sudo /ramdisk/home/linux/pendrive_usbhdd.sh (thx for the tip roberts):laugh:
it takes about 30 mins approx todo "zero data" (sumin like that) then say it has run out of space and i have found myself returning to windows n having to reformat my USB drive as fat
thanx for ant help
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