USB pen drive / SATA HDD confusion

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Tv

USB pen drive / SATA HDD confusion

#1 Post by Tv »

Hello.

I'm planning to install Puppy onto a 128MB USB pen drive. However, my primary HDD is a SATA drive, usually recognized as sda. My USB pen drive is therefore sdb. Now Setup > Install Puppy USB drive Step 2 says:
Ok, a USB memory device is plugged in, but is it the one that you
want to install Puppy onto?
if yes, then no problem, just press ENTER key...

...a bit of theory is useful at this point. The first usb drive is
recognised as sda, the second as sdb. However, if you have one
drive plugged in now, pull it out, then plug in the one you want
to install Puppy to, the second will be sdb even though the first
is removed.
BUT, that applies to k2.4. Kernel 2.6 throws a spanner in the works:
a second will be sda after first is removed.
You need to think about this, as what will the situation be when
booting from the USB device? Will it be the only drive plugged in?
...if so, later on in this script when you get the opportunity to
edit syslinux.cfg, make sure the parameter PHOME=sda1
Duh, as you see I can't just remove sda, that's my HDD. :-) And no, that's not the drive I want to install Puppy onto! I want to install it onto sdb, my pen drive. Now I didn't continue the install, fearing that it'll wipe my HDD, sda. Unreasonable? Any experiences with such a combo?

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gnomen
Posts: 65
Joined: Mon 11 Jul 2005, 11:21
Location: NORWAY

#2 Post by gnomen »

The box I usually use for installing Puppy to USB also has SATA. But Puppy has no support for SATA-drives so sda1 is still the USB pen drive. At least that is the case on my system. To find out just check whats on the drive /dev/sda. Just mount it with MUT and use ROX. I'll be quite surprised if you find much there
fake it until you make it

Tv

#3 Post by Tv »

Ok, thanks. Installed it and it properly installed to the stick. But now got some other problem, I always get the error message "Disk Boot Failure - Insert System Disk and Press Enter." when I boot with the pen drive plugged in, but that's unrelated to Puppy and occurs always when the pen drive is plugged in at boot, regardless of its content and also if I just want to boot from HDD. Google told me this message often pops up when some USB stuff is plugged in, but didn't tell me how to solve it yet.

(Yes my machine's able to boot from USB-HDD, USB-ZIP, USB-FDD, ...)

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n8siv
Posts: 32
Joined: Mon 25 Jul 2005, 13:43
Location: ohio USA

#4 Post by n8siv »

I had the same thing i had to upgrade the syslinx to 3.11.
You can find it at kernel .org i think im on the road now all my
links are at home.
the fix is out thier :lol:

Tv

#5 Post by Tv »

Did that, works fine now. Thanks. :)

One more minor problem: Is it normal that the "Loading vmlinuz....", "Loading image.gz...." procedure takes a very long time to complete? Like 1-2 minutes. Takes a lot of Puppy's speediness away. Puppy's boot itself appeared a bit slow too. It's running at USB 2.0 high speed according to usbview.

Oh, will future versions have SATA support?

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gnomen
Posts: 65
Joined: Mon 11 Jul 2005, 11:21
Location: NORWAY

#6 Post by gnomen »

You get all kinds of read and write speeds on flash devices. A fast device can be up to 10 times faster than a slow one. My old usb pen drive was cheap and slow and took forever to boot
fake it until you make it

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danleff
Posts: 294
Joined: Sun 08 May 2005, 13:11
Location: Albany, NY
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#7 Post by danleff »

You can add sata support to Puppy if you know what sata chipset is in your system. I did it with mine. Do you know what chipset is in the system?
I love it when a plan comes together

--Hannibal Smith

Tv

#8 Post by Tv »

It's a VIA VT8237, the kernel module is sata_via.

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