Boot USB Device on Non-USB Boot Mobo

[MrChris]

Are there any "boot loaders" out there than can boot a USB boot device on a mobo that does not support booting to a usb device.

In otherwords what I am thinking of is as follows

Create some type of maybe DOS based bootable floppy disk that inturns loads USB host drivers then looks for a boot sector on the usb device then if found loads the found boot sector and thus booting the USB device

Thanks,

MrChris

[Noise]

You "might" be able yo get a DOS boot disk to initialize the USB bus on your motherboard. And you "might" be able to find a DOS mode driver that would allow you to mount the USB Drive as a drive letter under DOS.

But once DOS is loaded and running, it's not really possible to load a bootsector (either an image file or bootable drive) and boot from it. At least I've never seen this done, it may be possible. But if it is, there's some black magic involved.

[MrChris]

I have many floppy boot disks out there most of wich load usb drivers to allow the use of usb deviced, however what I am after is booting a usb drive on a machine that does now support usb bootable devices.

I have a 80GB notebook drive 2.5" in a external usb drive enclosure. I have bartpe installed on it but i want to be able to boot to the USB drive. I also have many bartpe cd/dvds that I use but my target audience does not have any cdrom drives for security reasons.

Granit I am not a developer by any means but I wouldnt think it would be to hard to have a bootloader be called by some exe os some sort after a boot process has already been init.

thanks again for the input.

MrChris

Edited August 24, 2005 by MrChris

[hatfira]

You can't boot after you boot. It simply can not be done. The boot loader is designed to only read from one device. About the closest thing you could do is to have the DOS level USB drivers load, then call the USB CD-ROM, and do the same type of things you would do in the boot scenario. There has to be a floppy drive in this scenario, so I would advocate using this to boot, load the USB drivers (if available) then launch Ghost, Drive Image, or whatever tool you want to use from the CD. It can be setup to where when the .CMD file launches, all the rest is hands-off. This way, all you have to do is plug in the drive, pop in the floppy, then power up the machine.

It's a pain, but in the scenario you describe, this is probably the best you can hope for.

One final thing: I'm sure you already thought of this, but if the machines are less than a few years old, there may be a BIOS upgrade that will let it boot from USB.

Good luck to you!

[jaclaz]

Well, maybe

You can't boot after you boot. It simply can not be done. The boot loader is designed to only read from one device.

is a bit too "radical".

I am not at all an expert with GRUB (the bootloader that comes with most Linux distros), but it seems like there is the possibility of "boot from another device".

Of course loading the OS has to go through syslinux/memdisk.

Here is a method to how to make a floppy to boot from an USB device, I presume that "installing" the floppy on the HD should be possible:

http://www.8ung.at/spblinux/

http://home.tele2.ch/spblinux/bootdisk/bootdisk.txt

As said I am not an expert on this, but it "should" be possible.

jaclaz

[net_user]

your mobo has to subbort usb booting no matter what ....

check out a program called flashboot

http://www.prime-expert.com/flashboot/screenshot.php

works pretty good....i use my flash disk all the time now if i need to boot into dos...no more floppy disks

[MrChris]

acording to the website for SPBLinux 2.1b13 preliminary release can

using the makebootable script SPBLinux, started from the install cd, can be copied to a USB storage device.

Im going to have to check this one out il post feedback!

MrChris

Edited August 25, 2005 by MrChris