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Bootable USB drive help

B

blp1884

n00b
Joined
Dec 5, 2006
Messages
15
Hi folks,

So yesterday I bought two SanDisk Cruzer Glide 16GB USB drives. I wanted to use one of them as a bootable USB for linux distros I got them because they're super cheap, 10$ for each. I formatted the USB drive and tried to install a Debian live OS onto one of the drives and couldn't get it to work. I followed instructions from

[http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj200124.aspx

to make the USB bootable. I also downloaded unetbootin too and tried that. I've also read the instructions on the Debian.org website as well on how to do this.

So what I've tried so far.
1. Make the usb bootable following the directions from the hyperlink, put the Debian OS on to the USB changed my bios to read from external device (clearly didn't work).
2. Reformated the USB and tried to use unetbootin, problem with that is unetbootin gives the option to select a USB drive in my case it gave me D: and E: to choose from or Disk Drive C:. The USB has letter G: assigned to it and that wasn't an option.
3. I've also checked the USB in the device manager and the computer management. Both show the drive as active and healthy. The drive currently has a NTFS file system, I also tried FAT32. didn't help.
4. Plugged in the 2nd USB of the same type without making any changes to it and it showed up as a disk drive as well not a removable drive like I expected.

That's really all I've been able to figure out so far. My thought is that a) I can't boot it as an external device because it's being read by my computer as a fixed disk drive instead of a removable drive. Although I have the option to safely remove the device like it's an external device it's not showing up as a removable device and I'm not sure why. b) I also read that the fixed drive is from the factory and due to Windows 8 software or something of the sort but cannot confirm if that's true.

So my question is there anyway to make the USB drive I have a bootable drive for Linux OS Distro.

My specs:
Sony Laptop
Windows 7 premium
4gbs Ram
2.20 GHz
500GB Seagate HD (original HD failed)

If you need pics, additional info, or anything else to help me out just let me know and I'll do my best to get it posted.

Thanks
 
Most Linux distro install ISOs these days can simply be directly written to a USB drive and booted. These are sometimes referred to as iso hybrids or hybrid isos.

Boot a live linux distro (from a CD if necessary), usually installers come with one these days.

Below assumes usb drive at /dev/sdb, please use appropriate path as you don't want to accidentally overwrite a hard drive. (Better yet, if your really new to this stuff might be safer to unplug your harddrives while doing this)

Substitute '/path/to/install.iso' for a path to your installer image.

Code: 
dd if=/path/to/install.iso of=/dev/sdb
 
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from within windows you can run a cmd as admin then run:

diskpart
list disk
select disk (number of the flash drive)
select partition 1 (assuming one partition on flash drive)
active
exit

That will mark the partition as active so you can boot off it, then you just need the files from an iso, assuming you mounted the ISO or are copying from an exisiting CD you can do
xcopy CD: FD: /e /h (cd = cd drive letter, fd = flash drive drive letter)

This works very well for making bootable windows vista/7/8 install flash drive, assuming its formatted NTFS, but has also worked for making bootable ubuntu flash drives for me (formatted fat32)
 
devman,

I downloaded the debian live iso file using uTorrent from debian.org. I believe this is the iso hybrid that you're talking about. I have this file saved on my desktop. I did copy that over to the USB after I formatted the drive using lilfriend's method. I just dragged the file over to the G: drive (USB) to copy it.

When I switched my bios to read from external drive and moved it to the top position, I rebooted and pressed F11 on my computer to get it to boot from the external drive I received a "mbr error" message.
I'm not sure what to do about that. I know it means master boot record. But I'm not sure if it's an error with the iso file, usb, or I'm just plain doing it wrong.

Also to do what you suggested would I need to have a cd to boot from? If so I can't burn a copy of the linux distro to a cd since my player on my laptop has failed (normally not a big deal since I never use it anyway). Also if I need to have linux installed on a computer to make use of the command line I only have Windows 7 premium available to me.

You are 100% correct, I am a noobie just as my title suggest so I'd definitely take out my hard drive before attempting your suggestion.

Thanks for your help so far.
 
I had a SanDisk Cruzer..It gave me problems when I tried to make bootable DOS disk with it.
I use a Centon or HP?
idk..I've installed Ubuntu to a USB b4..no special formatting or anything.
 
blp1884 said:
devman,

I downloaded the debian live iso file using uTorrent from debian.org. I believe this is the iso hybrid that you're talking about. I have this file saved on my desktop. I did copy that over to the USB after I formatted the drive using lilfriend's method. I just dragged the file over to the G: drive (USB) to copy it.

When I switched my bios to read from external drive and moved it to the top position, I rebooted and pressed F11 on my computer to get it to boot from the external drive I received a "mbr error" message.
I'm not sure what to do about that. I know it means master boot record. But I'm not sure if it's an error with the iso file, usb, or I'm just plain doing it wrong.

Also to do what you suggested would I need to have a cd to boot from? If so I can't burn a copy of the linux distro to a cd since my player on my laptop has failed (normally not a big deal since I never use it anyway). Also if I need to have linux installed on a computer to make use of the command line I only have Windows 7 premium available to me.

You are 100% correct, I am a noobie just as my title suggest so I'd definitely take out my hard drive before attempting your suggestion.

Thanks for your help so far.
Click to expand...

You need access to a Linux system to use 'dd'. I recommend you use unetbootin to create a bootable USB linux that unetbootin supported directly. Almost any live Linux will have dd included so which distro you choose isn't really that important, just choose one you might be familiar with. You can then use that to write the .iso you want to USB (you can even use the USB you booted from if it is a load from RAM type live distro).
 
Well I download the program y'all recommended and everything was fine until I started the process. It said that an error occurred and the USB drive wouldn't be bootable.
 
devman,

I tried unetbootin. My problem with it is no matter if I chose USB or Hard Disk it wouldn't show the G: drive it only gave me the options of C: my main drive, E: my removable drive and D: my cd drive that doesn't work. I'm open to any and all suggestions. I'm also not familiar with any linux distros having never used one before. All I know about them is from what I've read or seen on youtube.

Also, regarding YUMI, it went through the whole process just said the drive wouldn't be bootable. Everything else seemed to finish like it was supposed to.
 
The YUMI error was Syslinux Errors 1 but didn't give any other information that I could find
 
Ok, just tried the USB post YUMI, I got as far as a black screen with a blinking line in the left corner. I let it sit for about 60 seconds then just ctrl/alt/del back to bios and changed then back to normal settings. Could the USB device not be capable of being a bootable device?
 
The way I recently (3 days ago) installed ubuntu server is I used win32diskimager to write the .iso to my USB drive A. Then used a usb drive B, booted the computer from USB A and just installed everything hunky dory onto drive B. No issues whatsoever. only thing of note is to use disk imager you have to set file type to all files to see the .iso.

The only thing special I did was format USB A to FAT32.

Both were 32GB USB 3.0 Flash Drives.

Ninja Edit: I used a standard CD (or was it DVD?) size .iso from their site that you would normally write to a CD.
 
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Great news folks, it's finally working. I used YUMI reformatted the drive from NTFS TO FAT 32 and everything now works.

I want say Thank You to everyone who contributed to my question and helped me. I am totally new to this and will definitely be coming back for more help soon so be on the look out :).
 
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