USB 3.0: (New) Samsung/SanDisk FlashD halt boot on laptop

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Mitchellray
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USB 3.0: (New) Samsung/SanDisk FlashD halt boot on laptop

#1 Post by Mitchellray »

Hello,
I have an HP COMPAQ Presario V3000. It boots from USB, DVD/CD, and HDD, although I rarely boot from HDD.
I just purchased two new Flash Drives, 1-Samsung USB 3.0 Flash Drive Fit, 32GB, and 1-Sandisk Cruzer Fit, 32GB.
Just to test out the devices, I transfered some pdf files. They both work and were quick. Then I tried to copy an .2fs save file to the Samsung, and it was slow, but okay.
Then I discovered that when either of those flash drives is inserted prior to power on to boot, the machine hangs almost immediately with a flashing cursor and nothing more happens.
Other older used flash drives do not cause this problem.
I tried to reformat the Samsung, but it still causes the same problem.
They do both work for storage, but oddly interfere with boot up.
When I enter boot options and tell to put dvd/cd first, then the machine boots from the cd normally. That is incovenient.
The further reason I am asking for help is that I wonder if there is going to be a problem in the future for Puppy and other portable OSes.
M

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bigpup
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#2 Post by bigpup »

Use Gparted to look at the USB flash drives.
See if their partition is flagged boot.
If yes.
Unflag them.

Any help??

Also, what format are they?
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

Mitchellray
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#3 Post by Mitchellray »

Hello bigpup,

I have used gparted as well as fdisk. I have tried with boot flag toggled on and toggled off. I tried reformatting to ext.2 and also to fat32. I tried creating a new UUID. I think I may have tried creating a new empty dos partition table as well, just because nothing else had worked up until that point.

A general internet search has revealed that there had been some issues going back as far as several years, but then I come back here because this issue is quite pertinent to the Puppy community, I think.

Plus I don't know if there are other 'New' flash drives that will still work and whether or not I should just return both of these. I would prefer to figure out how to make them work.

It seems that they have a reserved section of approximately more than 2GB, since gparted only sees 29.8 out of 32GB. Maybe there are some instruction there preventing the bios from bypassing the hardware, when it looks there first. But how to alter that?

The bios does recognize the name of the devices when escape to boot order is invoked pre-boot.

Again, I haven't had this problem with other flash drives, but these being name brand, I anticipate a new trend and would like to know there is a work around. Amusingly, and rare, the Samsung device packaging actually indicates Linux compatability.
M

purple379
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I use OS X when I have problems with flash drives.

#4 Post by purple379 »

That is the "Disk Utility" in OS X. I notice some folks on the Apple forums complain that the later versions of "Disk Utility are not always useful.

I had problems with the flash drive being ex-fat, and then some Flash Drives had a boot section that got installed somewhere.

I have a Samsung SSD in a tower that had issues when booting. Apparently it was so fast, that some other boot events did not get populated or started properly. I notice other folks had the same problem with a Samsung SSD. But then that has nothing to do with your problem.

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bigpup
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#5 Post by bigpup »

It seems that they have a reserved section of approximately more than 2GB, since gparted only sees 29.8 out of 32GB.
The file allocation table and the partition table take up some room.
The file allocation table, has some space set aside for it to grow, as files are added.
Also, it just depends on how the program you are using, to look at the drive, is depicting the space on it.
Usually, it just shows the usable space for data.

What you are seeing is about normal.

This is my 32GB USB flash drive as shown in Gparted.
29.89 GiB
The manufactures label stuff using the size that looks the biggest.
Now you are getting into labeling it in bites or bytes.
Many manufacturers use a decimal number system to define amounts of storage space. As a result, 1 MB is defined as one million bytes, 1 GB is defined as one billion bytes, and so on. Since your computer uses a binary system as mentioned above, you may notice a discrepancy between your drives published capacity and the capacity acknowledged by your computer. For example, a hard drive that is said to contain 10 GB of storage space using a decimal system is actually capable of storing 10,000,000,000 bytes. However, in a binary system, 10 GB is 10,737,418,240 bytes. As a result, instead of acknowledging 10 GB, your computer will acknowledge 9.31 GB. This is not a malfunction but a matter of different definitions.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

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bigpup
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#6 Post by bigpup »

See if the computer bios is actually seeing the USB flash drives as hard drives.
Should be a bios section that lists hard drives found on computer.

This was a way to get the computer to boot from an operating system on the USB.
Maybe the reverse will apply to your computer.
solution was to change the priority of hard disk drives (Move my Cruzer Fit USB stick above my internal HDD in the priority order). This was a separate menu in the BIOS from the boot priority (where it was set as 1. removable disk 2. hdd 3. dvd drive etc)
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

Mitchellray
Posts: 116
Joined: Mon 07 Dec 2009, 04:30

USB 3.0: (new).........halt boot on laptop

#7 Post by Mitchellray »

f10 into bios, there is not a breakdown of devices.
The boot order is set as:
1. USB Hard Drive
2. ATAPI CD/DVD ROM Drive
3. USB Diskette on Key
4. USB Floppy
5. Network Adapter

Esc to specify boot order after power on shows that the Samsung is recognized as a USB Flashdrive and the SanDisk is recognized as USB without the Flashdrive designation.

I usually boot from a CD into Precise Puppy. But, I also use other flavors that I boot from USB flashdrive. If a no-OS USB flashdrive is inserted at the time of boot, the bios usually just defaults to the CD, which is always in the drive.
However, these new USB flashdrives are interrupting the process and the machine doesn't proceed once the flashdrive is discovered and, evidentally accessed.
M

peterw
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Flash Drive inserted stops boot process

#8 Post by peterw »

I have had occurrences on some machines where any inserted USB stick stopped the boot process. This was true even if the BIOS settings were to boot from the HD. I seem to remember that my research at the time showed it was a BIOS fault and I was stuck with it.

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Burn_IT
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#9 Post by Burn_IT »

Indeed there are some USB devices which DO interfere with the boot process even if they or the machine is not actually trying to boot from them. This is because the BIOS has to scan the headers at least and, unfortunately, malicious as well as genuine code can be present there.
"Just think of it as leaving early to avoid the rush" - T Pratchett

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BarryK
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#10 Post by BarryK »

post deleted.
Last edited by BarryK on Fri 10 Nov 2017, 01:31, edited 1 time in total.
[url]https://bkhome.org/news/[/url]

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Burn_IT
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#11 Post by Burn_IT »

The code is in an area that is not normally accessible to the user so cannot be accessed or changed.
I believe there are special tools that WILL allow access, but I haven't checked as I have never needed to.
"Just think of it as leaving early to avoid the rush" - T Pratchett

Mitchellray
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#12 Post by Mitchellray »

Hello,
I will try using "# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M conv=fsync oflag=sync".
Meanwhile, maybe it doesn't matter as I thought because I dd pyro32-0.5 to the SanDisk and the device then is able to boot to the OS. (write speed about 10mb/s)
Then, I used easydd to the Samsung and it too was able to boot to the OS.
Then, I wiped the SanDisk and reformatted using gparted. The pre-boot frozen screen with flashing cursor problem surfaced again.
Then, I dd pyro32-0.5 to the SanDisk for a second time and it boots to the OS.
This time I manually deleted all of the files from each of the two partitions on the SanDisk and even reformatted partition 2 to ext.2 Now when booting, the error message "missing operating system" appears, but then the machine looks to the second option, CD/DVD and boots normally to Precise Puppy.
So, I will report back after I try the overwriting the entire device with "zero". Is that writing zero(s)?
M

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BarryK
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#13 Post by BarryK »

Mitchellray wrote:Hello,
I will try using "# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M conv=fsync oflag=sync".
Meanwhile, maybe it doesn't matter as I thought because I dd pyro32-0.5 to the SanDisk and the device then is able to boot to the OS. (write speed about 10mb/s)
Then, I used easydd to the Samsung and it too was able to boot to the OS.
Then, I wiped the SanDisk and reformatted using gparted. The pre-boot frozen screen with flashing cursor problem surfaced again.
Then, I dd pyro32-0.5 to the SanDisk for a second time and it boots to the OS.
This time I manually deleted all of the files from each of the two partitions on the SanDisk and even reformatted partition 2 to ext.2 Now when booting, the error message "missing operating system" appears, but then the machine looks to the second option, CD/DVD and boots normally to Precise Puppy.
So, I will report back after I try the overwriting the entire device with "zero". Is that writing zero(s)?
M
Yeah, ignore my post. As you already did dd to the entire drive, there is no point in writing zeroes as I suggested.

The situation must be as Burn_IT suggested.
[url]https://bkhome.org/news/[/url]

Mitchellray
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#14 Post by Mitchellray »

My apology for the original bad assumption that there would be a problem with being able to boot a Puppy OS from these drives. I will have to try the other method as well with some other flavors to see if that works too.

I went ahead anyway with #dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M conv=sync oflag=sync
#sync
The device was then ignored by the bios and the machine booted the 2nd choice CD/DVD.
Gparted reported the device as having unrecognized disk label. To be expected?
I created the default msdos partition table.
Then, rebooting the machine with the SanDisk inserted resulted in the same hang as before.
I ran the procedure .....#sync, again, and the machine ignores the flashdrive again and boots via CD/DVD.
I wonder how it can be formatted or why when after writing the pyro32* image file and even after deleting all of the files manually, the device can be bypassed rather than hanging the machine.
Will it have to wait for another time and place to be resolved?
M

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Mike Walsh
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#15 Post by Mike Walsh »

@Mitchellray:-

Are you talking about one of these:-

Image

.....or one of these?

Image

Because if it's one of the former, then I'm flummoxed. I've had a 'backup' Puppy installed to one of these for a couple of years, and it boots flawlessly.

These are USB 2.0.

However, if it's one of the latter, then I can sympathise with you. I've got several of these, in assorted sizes, ranging from 32GB - 128GB, and they point-blank refuse to boot an OS. A real shame, considering the read/write speeds.

These, however, are USB 3.0. And that could be the root of your problem, y'see. My old Compaq Presario desktop (older than yours - 2003/4 - and built shortly before the HP 'buyout'), has only USB 2.0 ports. I've 'converted' to USB 3.0 by installing a PCI-e USB 3.0 adapter card (I have an external 1 TB Seagate USB 3.0 HDD, with which file transfer times are unreal thru this card).....but it still won't boot from the USB 3.0 SanDisks.

Newer computers with 3.0 ports built-in to the motherboard apparently have appropriate firmware that recognises the USB 3.0 controller chips in the flash drives, and will permit booting. However, these adapter cards don't have this firmware in their intermediate controller chips.....and this is what prevents booting, I'm afraid. They don't 'recognise' the BIOS flashROM chips, where all the pre-boot stuff lives.

These USB 3.0 drives will boot happily from newer motherboards where the ports are an integral part of the design. I, however, use a pair of the 128 GB SanDisks in my even older Dell Inspiron lappie, from 2002/3, as 'permanent' external storage, to boost overall storage capacity. For this task, they excel.

This may, of course, not be your problem at all.....but I felt it was worth mentioning in this instance. On ye anciente Dell lappie, I got around the slow boot speed problem by upgrading the 20 GB internal Hitachi Travelstar HDD to a 64GB Transcend IDE/PATA solid state drive.


Mike. :wink:

Mitchellray
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#16 Post by Mitchellray »

Hello Mike Walsh.
Oddly, my SanDisk looks like the top pic, but is a 3.0 version. My presario has a couple of 1 series and one 2 series usb port.

Using the directions for pyro32 install to usb, the drives will boot the os.
It is that the drives were stopping the boot process when they had no os on them, but only backup files. I of course changed the boot order to cd first choice to boot the Precise os I use daily. But I still would liked to have had a definitive answer to the why of it.

Now, I left pyro32 on the Samsung fit 3.0 usb and created a third partition for backup files.
The SanDisk has backup (copies) of files to access on my pi3.
On the SanDisk, after installing pyro32, I deleted the pyro32 directories and files from both created partitions (but left the two partitions). That keeps it from interfering with the boot process of the presario as well. And it of course is not an issue for the pi3 in any case as far as booting.
M

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gychang
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#17 Post by gychang »

questions.

1. anyone use "stubby" USB 3.0 (16-32G), that is puppy friendly as boot OS in laptop?, which model from Amazon?

2. USB 3.0 faster than 2.0 in general even in USB 2.0 machines?
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8Geee
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#18 Post by 8Geee »

point #2... not that much faster, about 5%
A good SanDisk USB2.0 will transfer better than 20Mb/sec. Mine are going 21Mb/sec, but results may vary according to motherboard.

point #1 bringsup a good question... is the "no boot" scenario limited to SDXC drives (over 32Gb) or do the SDHC (32Gb and less) also do not boot.

Regards
8Geee
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