Bootable USB Flash drives

[Norphy]

Wouldn't it be easier to make the USB hard drive bootable?

[sahmeepee]

If you do that, you tend to get USB 1 speeds, I think because you're using your BIOS's USB support

[W32Jbot]

The HP utility doesnt support all flash drives so you need to test them before buying them. my supplier tests them for me before shipping and i get them £7.15 for a 128MB stick. The Disgo ones definately work and they say they tested kingston data traveller 128's for us too, i have also tested and am using CNMemory sticks too. I have written a guide with all the tools and utilities needed to create the bootable drives for my staff to use here.

 

I am willing to share it.

[thom]

Updated Guide

Thanks to HP updating their USB Flash tool it is now even easier to boot from USB.

Pre-requisites

Windows XP StartUp Floppy Disk

HP Drive Key Boot Utility

Universal Network Boot Disk

 

 

Instructions

1: Create a windows XP startup disk (if you haven't already). To do this put a floppy disk in a Windows XP PC > Open My Computer > Right-click floppy drive > Select Format... > Tick "Create an MS-DOS StartUp Disk" > Click Start.

2: Run the HP Drive Key Boot Utility > Work your way through the wizard choosing "Create New or Replace Existing Configuration" > Choose Floppy Disk > Choose "Image from Drive A:"

3: If all you want is a bootable flash drive then you can stop now. If you want to boot to a network and load a ghost image then continue

4: In the NetBootDisk folder then edit the MakeDisk.bat file. Change A: to the letter of your Flash Drive (e.g. F: ) > Run the batch file.

5: If you want to boot to ghost on a network share and load a file the create this logon batch file in the fileCopy folder >

REM --- Automatically run Ghost from a network share ---

@echo off

echo Mapping V to \\Server\Share

net use v: \\Server\Share

v:

echo Loading Ghost

ghost.exe -clone,mode=load,src=V:\Image.gho,dst=1 -sure -rb6: Stick the drive in the USB port on the computer you want to ghost and voila !

[Jenko22]

Hi All

 

I've been testing bootable USB drives and have now got the RM Build disk working. And touch-wood it has worked in every machine tried so far.

 

My next step is to create multiple partitions on the USB stick and have a different floppy image in each and use a boot loader.

 

Has anyone tried something similar?

[steve]

@Jenko22

 

I've been doing just that over the last few days.

If you use the HP Drive Key Boot Utility you can add multipule disk images to the usb drive - no need to partition it.

 

I've created some more advanced menus with the software below:

 

Use hexplorer to edit menu.msg and customise the boot screens and menus.

RawWrite to extract images from floppy disks

Virtual Floppy Drive to edit disk images without writing them to floppy