USB Flash drives that won't boot to Linux

[The Major]

I find my new Kingston DataTraveler 2 USB drive won't boot either, so that's another one for the list

[babbs]

Major,

What have you tried so far? Also what version of Puppy are you working with?

Babbs

[grepnik]

Just to report back, following Barry's instructions to the letter to install Puppy2 resulted in another unbootable Flash drive. Not only that, but unviewable as well, dd won't copy it, and another sector-level disk access tool (DiskED on Win98) crashes.

This is on the PNY Attache 512MB. I can't be sure this is the same problem with this drive that prevents a non-DOS boot, but I note that Trip has succeeded in using the DOS/Dos-Linux-loader method with Puppy2, see the end of this topic
http://www.murga.org/%7Epuppy/viewtopic.php?t=6132

I was probably not using the current version of Puppy2, things may have changed in later releases.

I may try the Dos approach with Puppy2 next, though for normal use I'm inclined to boot off CD with PHOME on USB.

Major, it may be worth your while trying the technique in the topic listed above. If you can make it boot to DOS I suspect it can be made to boot Puppy.

[The Major]

I'm running Puppy 1.0.8, and I've tried the standard install to USB instructions. Everything appears OK when I follow the script, but when I try to boot from the USB falsh drive, I get a message "missing operating system".

I previously had a PNY flash drive running happily on the same laptop (Dell Latitude X300) under 1.0.7

[Mons]

Hi,
I tried for a couple of days to boot unsuccessfully with various installations and formatting from Windows etc.

The solution was the HP tool. See here (with link to the tool in question):
http://www.oreillynet.com/digitalmedia/ ... _driv.html

My laptop also said "No operating system" until I reformatted with the HP tool.

Now my Puppy 1.08 boots like a dream

And with the little Puppy, I still have plenty of space for my files!

Mons

[The Major]

Thanks for this post - it sorted me out

[boscobearbank]

FWIW, I found I could get my PNY Attache 512Mb flash drive to boot puppy2alpha (as a USB-Zip device) by using the command mkfs.msdos -I /dev/sda to create the filesystem on the drive. Using the superfloppy option from the puppy installer didn't work for me.

[ChechenPuppy]

I find my new Kingston DataTraveler 2 USB drive won't boot either, so that's another one for the list

The reason could be that this particular USB drive (not all by Kingston) is rather slow. Check my thread for more details: http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?t=8033
As a result, BIOS does not waite long enough for its reaction. If you have in your BIOS the option like "USB Mass Storage Reset Delay " then try to set it to the maximal value.