Access USB Flash (Thumb) Drive after Booting via Bootable CD Rom

[Brad]

Hi,

Does anyone know how to access a USB flash ("thumb") drive
after booting via a bootable CD rom?

If there was a Dos driver for a flash drive, that would be one
way.
Thanks in advance, Brad

Before you type your password, credit card number, etc.,
be sure there is no active keystroke logger (spyware) in your PC.

 

[R. McCarty]

Depends on what type of OS/Environment you are booting to. If
your motherboard BIOS has an option "Legacy USB" you should
enable that.

 

[William of Baskerville]

Hi,

Does anyone know how to access a USB flash ("thumb") drive
after booting via a bootable CD rom?

If there was a Dos driver for a flash drive, that would be one
way.
Thanks in advance, Brad

Before you type your password, credit card number, etc.,
be sure there is no active keystroke logger (spyware) in your PC.

Win XP doesn't have DOS!
Only the command prompt which is NOT DOS.
DOS drivers won't work in XP.

 

[PD43]

Win XP doesn't have DOS!
Only the command prompt which is NOT DOS.
DOS drivers won't work in XP.

You can't read.

One CAN boot to DOS, as the OP stated.

 

[Tim Slattery]

You can't read.

One CAN boot to DOS, as the OP stated.

Yes, if that's what's on the CD that he's booting from. IMHO, that's
not very likely, but it is possible.

He doesn't say what IS on that CD. It could be a WinXP CD or a Knoppix
CD or a Solalris CD or.....

 

[smlunatick]

Hi,

   Does anyone know how to access a USB flash ("thumb") drive
after booting via a bootable CD rom?

   If there was a Dos driver for a flash drive, that would be one
way.
                Thanks in advance,   Brad

  Before you type your password, credit card number, etc.,
 be sure there is no active keystroke logger (spyware) in your PC.

I seem to recall that there might have been a "DOS" style drive for
USB drive when I was creating a Ghost 2003 "DOS boot" floppy.

 

[PD43]

Yes, if that's what's on the CD that he's booting from. IMHO, that's
not very likely, but it is possible.

It's more than possible.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Hi,

Does anyone know how to access a USB flash ("thumb") drive
after booting via a bootable CD rom?

It depends on the bootable CD that you use and the drivers it loads.
Unfortunately you haven't specified this.

I believe I have done this via bootable Linux CD (Ubuntu, as it happens).
It was easy.

If there was a Dos driver for a flash drive, that would be one
way.

It is one way, but there are several problems with this that account for it
not being a common way.

First is simple (lack of) availabilty of DOS USB drivers - others allude to
this as a problem with older versions of disk cloning utilities like Ghost,
which booted to a DOS variant for cloning but could not clone to
USB-connected disks.

There isn't a lot of DOS device driver development these days, and you need
to have the correct driver for the chipset on the motherboard. You may
find generic drivers that work but performance and reliablilty may be
compromised.

Second is the limited amount of memory available to DOS for device drivers
and programs at the same time. There are good reasons DOS is obsolete.

A third is the necessity to get the drivers loaded properly at DOS boot,
which means that you have to already have the correct drivers and know the
correct parameters and have written the boot files properly, and burned them
to CD before starting.

A fourth is that DOS does not natively understand NTFS volumes, and NTFS
drivers must be loaded which take even more memory away.

You may well find that a perfectly adequate wheel already exists in the form
of the Linux boot CD.

These are free and need only downloading as images and burning to CD.

You might need to keep a couple of variants on hand as you may not be able
to rely on perfect compatibility.

HTH
-pk