Booting From External Drives & Memory Sticks?

Is it possible to boot Linux or one of the MS versions of windows from an external USB CD-drive, a
memory stick, or any other type(s) of external drive?

I recall reading something about using a Targus PCMCIA drive of some sort - what would be unique to
allow booting from the PCMCIA interface?

The seller took 5 days rather than the promised 24-48 hours to ship my CF-28 so I am patiently ...
yeah sure ... waiting until the 30th for delivery!

Was offered a dead CF-28 cd-drive for $50. today but when I asked for confirmation that it included
the shell and if I removed the dead drive and inserted mine then I'd have a working drive which I could
install without any other hardware he suddenly stopped replying to my E-mails. Hmmmm. Hopefully it
was just after-hours wherever he worked and he will answer tomorrow.

What a pain trying to re-assemble a complete CF-28 without selling my car to pay for it!

 

LOL..............why on earth would you ask him that if you could use ur own drive, you just put ideas into his head and now guranteed he be selling it with another drive in there for $200.....
didnt it up a picture????

 

Try for the dead cd drive...

 

He got back to me, apparently it was just the end of his business day. Drive has been paid for and
should be here in a few days. I have the same cdrw/dvd drive Toughbook ordered waiting here on
my desk. I will follow Toughbook's instructions - no need to reinvent the wheel!

My CF-28 was finally shipped yesterday and is supposed to be here the 30th.

Excitement is building!

 

i havent tried booting winxp from usb yet,
think i'll give it a try this evening when i get back home.........

 

I don't think that booting from USB can be done on the CF-28 can it? I know that some sellers are selling external drives with PCMCIA interface... But even they say that they can load the OS if you provide the COA key.

I'll be eager to hear if anyone does this.

 

Here is an article for booting xp from a usb drive. Aparently you need two files from server 2003 which you can get free from the microsoft website. I just glanced through the article. I personally havent done it yet. http://www.informationweek.com/windows/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=177102101&pgno=2&queryText=

 

I was able to get USB support through DOS on a floppy disk, and install XP once that way, but the drivers are crappy and it was pokey. It can be done though.

I'm pondering if somebody could write a bios to tackle USB booting (openBios), because that would be kinda neat.

 

Puppy Linux has boot options using a floppy for cd's and USB and I think cf or sd cards, I will have to look
into that.

Sure would be awesome if someone a whole lot more talented than I could & would write a replacement bios!

 

Has anyone tried booting winxp from usb stick...........

 

have a full rugged cf-25 with empty hd and can't boot from cd(sucks i know) only floppy and does'nt have usb, but does have pcmcia and serial and i do have the cd caddy-how else can this be loaded?

 

Here's a trick I tried before I got my CD drive.
It does involve a desktop computer though... Get a 3.5" to 2.5" adapter (I bought it for $2 before CompUSA finally closed near me, they are usually cheap though), and install Windows on the desktop computer. When it goes to restart to finish the setup (Boots off the hard drive), put the drive back in the Toughbook, so it will try to get all the settings right.

 

what about booting from lan?????

 

If you have built-in LAN on a cf-28, it's usually an Intel Pro 10/100 nic. I remember seeing in the bios a network boot option when I had that installed.

I know you can boot from a PCI (or mPCI) nic if it supports it, but cardbus nics won't work directly. You can (theoretically) use a floppy to load a bootloader that supports your nic, and boot from there to a network image.

On that CF-28, you have 2 options. First one as above, use an adapter to boo the laptop drive in a desktop, get partway into the install until it wants to boot from the hdd. Pull the drive and stick it into the laptop. I'd recommend copying all the files off the CD to the laptop drive first, tho.

Option 2- use a better CDR. I had all kinds of issues with my CF-25's cdrom. I eventually got a spindle of good CD-R's and it booted fine.

With a CF-25, I used win98 to do initial boot, then copied win2k onto the hdd and installed it from there. Speaking of which, want a CF-25 with a pair of secondary batteries?

 

Reviving this thread to see if anyone has been able to boot the CF-28 from something other than the floppy/cd/hard drive allowed in BIOS.

I came upon PenDriveLinux, and there is discussion about booting to USB on a PC where the BIOS doesn't normally allow it. The directions alloed me to create the pendrive and boot on a USB capable desktop, and also use the floppy w/GRUB to boot there.

Problems however with a desktop and the CF-28 that don't allow the USB boot option - GRUB doesn't see the USB drive. I don't know if it is the computer, or if there is something that needs to be changed in GRUB to describe the USB device. I only know enough about Linux to know that USB devices are /dev/sda#. I'm thinking the GRUB configuration file needs to have that set, but the PDL site says the USB should be recognized as a hard drive device.

I've also tried similar booting trying to use SmartBootManager and the internal PCMCIA slot with a bootable CF card, but no luck there. I'm about at the point of saying it is just not possible. Don't want to give up on it, but it is looking less and less likely - I can't believe there is something that the CF-28 can't be coerced to do.

 

The BIOS for the CF-28s does not support boot from USB; believe me, if it did, we'd ALL be doing it.

My solution was to FDISK the laptop drive, then create a 3GB partition & another out of the remainder; then I installed the drive in a USB HD enclosure & plugged it into my desktop. I then X-copied a Windows XP install disk to the root of the 3GB partition & a Win'98 install disk to it's own subdirectory of that 3 GB partition. I tried making the 3GB partition bootable but it didn't want to cooperate( I suspected it might not - that's why I put the win98 install there too); so I booted from a win98 floppy, then went to the win98 directory & ran setup (Windows XP Setup WILL NOT RUN from command line; it either has to boot the machine itself, or be invoked from some other version of Windows). I installed to the larger partition & chose a compact install so nothing but the bare essentials was installed; then AS SOON as I could get to USE Windows, I started XP Setup. I then did a new install, wiping out the old Win98 install, & had it convert that partition to NTFS. From there it was smooth sailing; my install proceeded normally & XP Setup reset the larger partition as bootable. I still have the 3GB partition there; when I'm worried about it, I'll empty it & convert it to use as part of my bootable volume, or I may do an install of Ubuntu in there...

mnem
Decisions, decisions...

 

mnem,
That is essentially what I did to install W2k on my non-CD 28 - fdisk/format drive in USB enclosure (bootable to dos I believe - it's been a while), then copied i386 folder, moved it to the 28 and booted and installed at that point.

This link [ http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2007/11/21/use-a-floppy-to-boot-usb-pendrive-linux/] however mentions the possibility of booting from a floppy using GRUB, then selecting another device to boot from, with the possibility of selecting a USB stick formatted with Linux and rebooting that even if the BIOS doesn't normally allow USB booting. I know that 28's aren't USB bootable, but this offered the possibility of a workaround. What I don't know is whether the GUB boot can't see the USB at all, or whether there is something else I am missing - either the GRUB init files that describe the FDD and HDD need an addition to 'mount' the USB, or the USB is not recognized at all at this point in the boot, or (as I have read someplace) the USB is 'lost' at the point the boot is transferred to the USB.
Apparently this is also possible in some cases with SmartBootManager and a bootable CF card in the PCMCIA slot, if the PCMCIA can be recognized, and I am also trying to figure that out as I have time.
I probably need to take this over to the Linux forum and see if anyone there has any insight.

Thanks,
Ken

 

Okay, I don't really know the details of why, but Cf-28 boot from USB (in a round about way) is possible . After much online searching, I ended up with DamnSmallLinux and the bootfloppy-usb.img file. rawrite the image to a floppy, format flash and copy the DLS files to a 512mb flash drive, and syslinux to set up the flash drive. Pulled the hard drive and booted the floppy. At the command prompt typed 'DSL fromusb' and the OS bootedup.

Maybe someone can tell me why this worked for DSL and not the PDL linux? :confused2: At this point I'm in kinda deep, but hope to get up to speed with this and get some (nearly) diskfree booting going here.

 

I'm actually working on just this exact thing for my work. I have used DSL's boot floppy for years, it's great to be able to fix things that won't boot. DSL has changed things in the last release, you didn't use to have to type fromusb.

I've read through the pendrivelinux stuff, but haven't tried it yet. I'll post anything that I can get working.

 

Great, pico...., glad to know I'm not the only one.

I was also able to get Feather Linux booted from USB via floppy, using their bootusb-1.1.img on the floppy.
http://featherlinux.berlios.de/booting.html
I also want to try the PCMCIA disk to try and boot from CF in a cardreader in the internal PCMCIA slot.

With DSL the DSL boot floppy, I was able to copy the full Knoppix data from CD, replacing the DSL KNOPPIX file on the flash, and begin the boot, but it froze at the point of initializing the applications. I read someplace that Knoppix needs to be 'rebuilt' for other media as it looks for the CD rather than the location it is stored, and that is a bit beyond my Linux knowledge at the moment. Using some of the info on booting Knoppix from HD may help me there.

If these 2 work, then PenDriveLinux should work as well, just with a little more effort to get it going.

Anything I try I'll post as well, especially what I get to work. If I can get it to boot, then probably anyone can.

 

In my example, I remastered Ubuntu, and was trying to use DSL's (or anybody's) methods of boot floppy to point to a USB stick. The initrd was too big to fit on one floppy, trying to see if can make it work with two floppies... sort of a hassle, but not too bad.

 

Try the Puppy Linux implementation of this, they have worked hard to make it easy and reliable.

 

Picoshark - saw you were back from another thread. Have you had anymore success with the floopy to usb boot issues?

(welcome back)

 

Not sure if it was covered already, but the 6 floppy download from Microsoft gives you USB CD-ROM support for XP, that's how I loaded XP on my CF-28 without an internal CD drive.