USB Booting

From DSL Wiki

   This page in other languages: Deutsch, Español, 中文版 (chinese)

USB booting can be a hit-or-miss process with DSL or other pendrive-based operating systems.

1 BIOS
2 Boot floppy
3 Localization and installation
4 Update
5 MyDSL
6 External links
7 中文版（chinese version)

[edit]

BIOS

Older computer BIOS usually do not support direct booting from a USB device. Around 2001, PC motherboard manufacturers started to add USB boot support.

There are two common BIOS methods for direct USB booting:

One method is called the "USBHDD" method and it is used to support the booting of standard USB mass storage devices that are configured like a normal PC hard drive.
The other method is called the "USBZIP" method and it supports booting from a USB storage device that behaves like the original IOMEGA ZIP drive with USB support.

Most computers (just about all Dells, for example) made today have a BIOS that supports the USBHDD method so I expect that this will eventually become the standard way to boot a USB device. However, many motherboards will support BOTH methods, and many older motherboards have USBZIP support.

Some newer BIOSs which support USB 2.0 will not boot from an older pen drive. Using a USB 2.0 compliant one usually solves this problem. Also, some older BIOSs which only support USB 1.1 will not boot the newer drives which support USB 2.0!

If your computer does not seems to recognize your USB pen drive greater than 500MB, it is possible that the motherboard has the recognition set to "auto", which means it will treat pen drives less than 500MB as "Floppy", and greater than 500MB as USBHDD. Try to find the option "Force FDD", to allow you pen drive to be treated as USBZIP no matter its size.

[edit]

Boot floppy

In any event, just about any computer that has an available USB port will support booting from the DSL USB boot floppy. See the boot floppy section of the WIKI for more info.

[edit]

Localization and installation

From within the DSL LiveCD [1] main menu, it is possible to create either a USBZIP or a USBHDD formatted pendrive with DSL installed. Just choose the appropriate install method and follow the prompts. Also see Installing to a USB Flash Drive

Most USB pendrives are located at device name "sda" after they are plugged into the USB port. Be careful: many new serial ATA drives are also named "sda".

However, you can verify this location by typing this command inside a terminal window:

     dmesg | grep scsi -A 3

and it should tell you the device name for your USB (SCSI emulated) devices and vendor name.

[edit]

Update

How to update a previously installed flash DSL.

[edit]

MyDSL

Your MyDSL applications (*.dsl files) should be saved into the /cdrom directory if you would like them automatically booted off of the USB device upon bootup.

[edit]