Error while loading SDI image from USB flash drive

[IgorN]

Hi all!

I've tried to implement booting from the USB flash disk using
SDI+ramdisk technique.
My test image size is some 100mb, RAM size on the target machine is 512 mb.
I've built the sdi image from post-FBA hard disk partition (FAT16),
formatted USB drive FAT, with standart Windows format (GUI based). My
drive is 512mb, BTW.
Here's my boot.ini file:

[boot loader]
timeout=20
default=ramdisk(0)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
ramdisk(0)\WINDOWS="XPE RAM HDD" /fastdetect
/rdpath=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\image.sdi /rdimageoffset=4096
ramdisk(0)\WINDOWS="XPE RAM FDD" /fastdetect
/rdpath=multi(0)disk(0)fdisk(0)\image.sdi /rdimageoffset=4096
ramdisk(0)\WINDOWS="XPE RAM HDD not_so_fast"
/rdpath=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\image.sdi /rdimageoffset=4096
ramdisk(0)\WINDOWS="XPE RAM FDD not_so_fast"
/rdpath=multi(0)disk(0)fdisk(0)\image.sdi /rdimageoffset=4096

"XPE RAM HDD" option never starts with the USB (but I suppose it's OK)
/rdpath=multi(0)disk(0)fdisk(0)\image.sdi do start, brings up "loading
ramdisk" progressbar, advances 3 or 4 ticks and then quits with the
message "Error while loading ramdisk image".

I tried to boot with the same files (ntldr, ntdetect.com, boot.ini,
image.sdi) off the hard disk and it WORKED!

Now I am pretty much confused. What shall I try? Use different computer
hoping it is a BIOS USB support problem? Mine is Intel D865GBF MB and
I've updated BIOS with the newest one.
Play with USB formatting options?

TIA for any help
Igor

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Hi Igor,

BIOS-es that Intel use have some nasty feature to detect certain USB disks as floppy like disks as in your case. Even marking disk
as fixed do not help with this particular problem. You can try changing disk model or changing motherboard in order to avoid this
problem.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[IgorN]

Hi Slobodan,

Hi Igor,

BIOS-es that Intel use have some nasty feature to detect certain USB disks as floppy like disks as in your case. Even marking disk
as fixed do not help with this particular problem. You can try changing disk model or changing motherboard in order to avoid this
problem.

Thank you for acknowledging my suspictions. As I have tried to use two
different flash drives with _exactly_ the same result I think it is the
BIOS problem.
It appears that the BIOS can't read more than maybe 5Mb of data from the
disk.

Regards
Igor