Making Externally connected devices HD and OD bootable

[Roy]

Is it possible to make these devices connected by USB Bootable?
What I mean is its normal that if you boot from a CD you have to use
the internal optical drive; the same also with the O/S, it must be
booted from the internally installed harddrive.
Is there a turn around for this?
TIA

Roy

 

[David W. Hodgins]

Is it possible to make these devices connected by USB Bootable?

Depends on the bios in the system. My bios will only show usb
drives if the drive is present, with a bootable mbr, when the
system is powered on. In that case, the bios setup program will
show the usb drive in the list of drives where you select the
boot order.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

 

[Paul]

Is it possible to make these devices connected by USB Bootable?
What I mean is its normal that if you boot from a CD you have to use
the internal optical drive; the same also with the O/S, it must be
booted from the internally installed harddrive.
Is there a turn around for this?
TIA

Roy

I boot from an external 5.25" USB enclosure with a DVD drive
in it. I boot from my collection of Knoppix Linux LiveCDs, via
that external drive, or by using the internal drive inside my
computer. Either will work.

I have also booted from a USB flash, where a 1440KB image of a
DOS floppy was copied to the flash drive with "dd". So somehow, my
BIOS was able to boot from that (I never expected it to work).

The USB module in the BIOS, may have basic booting abilities,
as well as certain emulation modes, to convert a device into
something usable. But chances are, there is no documentation
about this.

There was a short interval of time (maybe a year), where
the BIOS had a separate page with details about what USB devices
were connected, their emulation mode if any and so on. The BIOS
writers have since made that invisible, and on newer computers
or motherboards, it no longer gets its own screen.

Note that, if you take your WinXP hard drive from inside the computer,
and place it into an external USB enclosure, it will not boot properly.
There is a problem with unmodified WinXP, in that the USB chain
gets disconnected during the boot sequence, and that prevents
the boot from completing (I think that is what gets broken).
Some clever people have figured out how to fix it, but the recipe
is not particularly easy. Some other OSes are more friendly with
respect to booting and operating from USB.

So one of the elements to being bootable, is whether the OS
can maintain the connection over USB, while booting is completing.

The hardest part about USB booting, is figuring out how to
make a bootable device. For example, it took me a while to
get something to work with my USB flash sticks, and my
first few attempts were not successful. Even a Knoppix option,
to make a bootable Knoppix environment on a flash stick,
didn't work (it would not boot for me). So there are a
number of recipes for making bootable devices, which may
or may not work. There are too many variables,
to predict with any certainty what will work.

I could not find this document on ami.com , so had to find it on another site.
This shows what options used to exist. See section 2.5.8.1
on PDF page 8.

http://www.securitytechnet.com/resource/hot-topic/homenet/AMIBIOS8_USB_Whitepaper.pdf

OK. Found it on archive.org as well.

http://web.archive.org/web/20030308133556/http://www.ami.com/support/doc/AMIBIOS8_USB_Whitepaper.pdf

Paul

 

[Roy]

It's a rather difficult hack to get XP to boot from a USB drive

http://www.ngine.de/article/id/8

You may want to go with Linux...

here is one example

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/all-in-one-usb-dsl/

Thanks for that info but its really possible to do so but not 100%
applicable on all Windows run PC?
How about if you boot with XP Cd from an external Optical drive
supposing your internal OD does not work anymore?

 

[Roy]

I boot from an external 5.25" USB enclosure with a DVD drive
in it. I boot from my collection of Knoppix Linux LiveCDs, via
that external drive, or by using the internal drive inside my
computer. Either will work.

I have also booted from a USB flash, where a 1440KB image of a
DOS floppy was copied to the flash drive with "dd". So somehow, my
BIOS was able to boot from that (I never expected it to work).

The USB module in the BIOS, may have basic booting abilities,
as well as certain emulation modes, to convert a device into
something usable. But chances are, there is no documentation
about this.

There was a short interval of time (maybe a year), where
the BIOS had a separate page with details about what USB devices
were connected, their emulation mode if any and so on. The BIOS
writers have since made that invisible, and on newer computers
or motherboards, it no longer gets its own screen.

Note that, if you take your WinXP hard drive from inside the computer,
and place it into an external USB enclosure, it will not boot properly.
There is a problem with unmodified WinXP, in that the USB chain
gets disconnected during the boot sequence, and that prevents
the boot from completing (I think that is what gets broken).
Some clever people have figured out how to fix it, but the recipe
is not particularly easy. Some other OSes are more friendly with
respect to booting and operating from USB.

So one of the elements to being bootable, is whether the OS
can maintain the connection over USB, while booting is completing.

The hardest part about USB booting, is figuring out how to
make a bootable device. For example, it took me a while to
get something to work with my USB flash sticks, and my
first few attempts were not successful. Even a Knoppix option,
to make a bootable Knoppix environment on a flash stick,
didn't work (it would not boot for me). So there are a
number of recipes for making bootable devices, which may
or may not work. There are too many variables,
to predict with any certainty what will work.

I could not find this document on ami.com , so had to find it on another site.
This shows what options used to exist. See section 2.5.8.1
on PDF page 8.

http://www.securitytechnet.com/resource/hot-topic/homenet/AMIBIOS8_US...

OK. Found it on archive.org as well.

http://web.archive.org/web/20030308133556/http://www.ami.com/support/...

    Paul

Thanks for that interesting info paul!
Roy

 

[jw]

Well - this is where I stand:

1) I now have my Fantom 1TB external hard drive connected to the
computer via eSATA => SATA, not USB.
2) I figured it would be faster than USB, and it is.
3) I have two partitions on the Fantom - 1 = 100GB; 2 = 900GB.
4) I have two machines LAN'ed together via router.
5) I have some test folders and files in the second partition, and
they read and write fine on both machines where whichever machine is
not selected in my KVM, it works through XP's sharing. I expected
that.
6) The machine to which the Fantom is connected has one internal hard
drive. The BIOS on that machine shows both the internal drive and the
Fantom. Using F8, I can boot from either one, and I tried both when I
tried to install XP from CD into the Fantom's first partition.
7) The installation progresses through the initial file loadings,
then at the first re-boot to continue the install, Windows comes up
showing 39 minutes to go. This is normal with XP installation.
8) Then it fails with this error in the drive:\setuperr.log:

ERROR
INSTALLATION FAILED H:V386\ERROR MESSAGE: INCORRECT FUNCTION

FATAL ERROR
ONE OF THE COMPONENTS THAT WINDOWS NEEDS TO CONTINUE SETUP COULD NOT
BE INSTALLED

INCORRECT FUNCTION

So, unless someone can suggest something, I think I am not going to be
able to make the Fantom bootable, dang it.

Thanks for any ideas and/or sympathy,

Duke