System boot from USB?

Hello again,

As I wrote I have Aspire 3023WLMi. Same day got for first time also a 128MB Transcend JetFlash USB device. Discovered that these USB things are real jewels. In the official manual was described that it is possible to boot system from the device. I was not interested in that issue and forgot it for few months until now.

I decided to start learning linux. I checked one site with devices listed for linux compatibility and saw my Aspire model was not listed as compatible. Anyway I decided to boot Knoppix from a live CD. Well it ran and I was pretty happy until passed with my mouse pointer over the HDD icons. Then for first time saw linux to freeze. It froze completely. I restarted using the power button. Repeated this operation 2-3 times and it froze exactly when passing over the same icons. I do not know why. ( Ideas?? )

Then remembered that there are small distributions. Started to read and saw they call them "minimalist". Researched the most used ones and decided to try and go with **** Small Linux and try to install it on the USB drive and boot from there, not using the GUI not to freeze the machine.

I already knew about VMWare but knew this is resource-greedy, so decided not to go with it.

The VERY VERY VERY curious issue I discovered is that this distribution comes with an emulator, which could launch linux under windows ( even xp ), without installing anything. I was sceptical but tried it and wow it worked!



But I still want to boot from the USB drive: How to make the laptop boot from the USB??


My main problem is the BIOS. Phoenix BIOS 1.13 does not mention things like "usb drive" or something. It have the usual list of devices: hard disk, floppy, network, cd-rom. Well the problem is I do not have a floppy. Read somewhere that computer could use the USB instead of floppy, but I am not sure I read correctly.

On the other hand on Phoenix site was mentioned with bold font that they only code the BIOS, then pass it to component manifacturers, which are alowed to modify the original code, so Phoenix could not help with any questions. I think to write them anyway, as well as Acer ( but I do not thing they will reply me fast, according to the mess called "acer website" ).

I am posting my experience and questions here, because I would like to get Your experience if any.

Will see what the technical supporters will reply...

Thanks for any help.
Regards.

 

Hi,

Check the tab with 'boot' or 'bootorder'. If your lappy can boot from USB, it should be there.

You might have to make your stick bootable first. Ikovac made a nice tutorial for that.



regards,

Ice-tea

 

Here is one of those reasons to keep this Acer software on your system.

Here is a cap of the relevant page in eSettings Management that should answer the question.

 

I agree man. But mine looks different. Already tried that at first place. Take a look. And by the way yesterday wrote to the technical support of Transcend. They replied me today:

Dear Sir or Madam,

First of all, thank you for choosing Transcend product!

Please make sure your Acer laptop could support booting from USB drive!

You must run the JF-Utility program on the JetFlash to enable this boot-up feature.
Once properly configured the JetFlash can be used as an MS-DOS Boot Disk on systems running the Windows OS.
This allows you to use the JetFlash to boot-up your computer and run MS-DOS programs.
For the Linux booting, honestly, we cannot ensure it is doable or not since we did not test it before.

Normally, the BIOS should detect JetFlash while booting.
However, some BIOS may not show the USB device in the boot menu.
You may need to set the USB-ZIP or USB-HDD or USB-FDD as the first boot device in the Boot Priority from BIOS.
(Based on which USB format you set to the JetFlash)

For the detail instruction, you may need to refer to the JetFlash 110 User Manual.
For the BIOS setting to enable the boot-up function, you may need to refer to your Acer laptop User Manual.

If you have any other question, please feel free to let us know!

Best Regards,
Vincent Chen
MBU Application Engineer
Technical Support Department
Transcend Information, Inc.​

Must say that last night tried their JetFlash utility and it seemed to reformat the device and copied one file there. It was unable to copy the windows system files. Anyway I did not needed it. I rebooted to see if at startup the computer will recognize the USB drive nomatter there is no system on it. Surprisingly I saw recognition string on the screen, which means that on theory I could really boot from it.

Regards.

 

****!! Thats not good. I have an 8204, kinda thought that these options might be different but thought i'd try anyway. Good luck.