Linux on a flash drive, can't boot from USB

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cjv998

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Dec 3, 2006
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Hi everyone. I've wanted to try out Linux (specifically Ubuntu) for a while now, but didn't want to risk messing up my hard drive and losing my data (I have XP Pro installed). So I read about being able to install Linux on a USB flash drive, and thought, "perfect!". So now I'm trying to install Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn) onto my USB flash drive (1GB Sandisk Cruzer Micro...got rid of the U3 system). Anyway, I tried this tip here to make sure I could boot from my USB drive:

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2007/09/17/testing-your-system-for-usb-boot-compatibility/

And it seems I can't boot from USB. The USB options show up in the BIOS under boot device (USB-HDD, USB-ZIP, USB-CDROM, and USB-FDD, may have been one more too), but it won't launch the memtest program (I even disabled booting from alternate devices temporarily to make sure nothing funny was going on). So, is there any way to get around this? I read a little about making a floppy you can boot to, that will in turn boot from the USB drive. Anyone know more about that possibly, or have any other ideas?

BTW, my motherboard is an ASUS A7N8X-X (nForce2, socket A), AwardBIOS Rev. 10.09.
 
Would you verify that you are moving USB-HDD (or USB-ZIP(I'm not sure USB-ZIP is the right option for these files)) to the top of the boot list and then "Save and Exit" to get out of the BIOS.

One forum post I read (specifically for your mobo) says make sure USB mouse and keyboard support is turned on.

Try again and if it doesn't boot from the USB, watch for the USB drive to be recognized during POST.

Another possibility is that you got a corrupted .zip. Redownload it and try again.
 
P.S. Kinda off topic, but when you get to the installing the .iso to the USB drive phase,

From the same websites tutorials. http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2007/09/21/usb-ubuntu-704-persistent-install/

I booted into 7.04 from the CD and tried to fdisk my USB drive.
SDB1 showed up after the fdisk-l command. But when I tried unmount/dev/sdb1, it didn't recognize it drive. So I tried skipping this step and went straight to fdisk/dev/sdb. The drive was not recognized. I haven't figured this out yet.
 
I had to enable the USB keyboard and mouse options (they were disabled, even though I'm using a USB mouse...not sure how that happened). Anyway, that fixed it, and I can boot from my flash drive perfectly fine now. Thanks for the help!

To upriverpaddler, that's actually the exact guide I'm using, I'll keep an eye out for any problems when I put Feisty on my flash drive later this afternoon.
 
Okay, so I can create my first partition and format it in FAT16 just fine. However, after I make the second, when I try to format it (using this: mkfs.ext2 -L casper-rw /dev/sda2), it says /dev/sda2 doesn't exist, even though fdisk -l shows it (with a partition type of Linux). Anyone know what's going on?

EDIT; Fixed that problem, but I found another. When I try to move the ubuntu files to the 700MB partition, it says there's insufficient space. So I reformat and make the first partition 750MB, and try again. Windows still won't put more than 700MB of the ubuntu files on the drive. Any ideas?

EDIT #2: Never mind, got that working too. Reformatted the drive again, and works fine, for the most part.
 
cjv998 said:
I had to enable the USB keyboard and mouse options (they were disabled, even though I'm using a USB mouse...not sure how that happened). Anyway, that fixed it, and I can boot from my flash drive perfectly fine now. Thanks for the help!

To upriverpaddler, that's actually the exact guide I'm using, I'll keep an eye out for any problems when I put Feisty on my flash drive later this afternoon.
Click to expand...

Most new bioses enable USB-Keyboard and Mouse emulation until the OS takes over. That way you can still access the bios.
 
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