Booting from pen drive?

[Kenny Cargill]

Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 m/b manual lists USB boot devices as USB-FDD, USB-ZIP,
USB-CDROM & USB-HDD but no pen drive.
Will it boot from a 16GB pen drive with a bootable image on it, will it see
it as an HDD?
I suppose the obvious answer is to try it and see but throwing the question
out anyway.

Kenny Cargill

 

[charlie]

Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 m/b manual lists USB boot devices as USB-FDD,
USB-ZIP, USB-CDROM & USB-HDD but no pen drive.
Will it boot from a 16GB pen drive with a bootable image on it, will it
see it as an HDD?
I suppose the obvious answer is to try it and see but throwing the
question out anyway.

Kenny Cargill

The slightly older desktop I'm using doesn't have those options, but it
boots fine from a bootable USB "stick". I tell BIOS what I want it to
boot from, and the order to boot from.

 

[Kenny Cargill]

Just tried it, set First Boot Device as USB-HDD and it booted directly from
it. Reason I asked is I'm doing a clean install of Win 7 to a new SSD, the
ISO is too big for standard DVDR and I don't have any dual layer discs.

Kenny Cargill

"charlie" wrote in message

Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 m/b manual lists USB boot devices as USB-FDD,
USB-ZIP, USB-CDROM & USB-HDD but no pen drive.
Will it boot from a 16GB pen drive with a bootable image on it, will it
see it as an HDD?
I suppose the obvious answer is to try it and see but throwing the
question out anyway.

Kenny Cargill

The slightly older desktop I'm using doesn't have those options, but it
boots fine from a bootable USB "stick". I tell BIOS what I want it to
boot from, and the order to boot from.

 

[Paul]

Just tried it, set First Boot Device as USB-HDD and it booted directly
from it. Reason I asked is I'm doing a clean install of Win 7 to a new
SSD, the ISO is too big for standard DVDR and I don't have any dual
layer discs.

Kenny Cargill

It's too big ? The Microsoft ISOs are in the 2.5GB to 3GB range,
give or take. All of the various 32 bit and 64 bit previews, have
fit on a 4.7GB DVD.

It should have fit. Were you doing multiple sessions on the DVD
somehow, and that's how it ran out of space ?

Have the tool prepare an ISO9660 file if possible, then
look at the size of that, and compare to 4.7GB.

*******

As for the "USB-FDD, USB-ZIP, USB-CDROM & USB-HDD" thing, the
BIOS at one time used to advertise "flavors of emulation".

Click the blue button here, to download AMIBIOS8_USB_Whitepaper.pdf .
See page 8

http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://www.ami.com/support/doc/AMIBIOS8_USB_Whitepaper.pdf

"If the block size of the media is greater than 512 bytes
then the emulation type is assumed as CDROM (El Torito formatted)

If the device has a partition table with more than one partition
then the emulation type is assumed as “Hard Disk”.

If the device has a partition table with only one partition
then the device is emulated as “Forced FDD”
"

Those are examples of the auto-detection logic for USB boot
devices.

It's possible it treats the USB flash as a "USB-HDD". Not sure.
Normally, Microsoft doesn't like to put multiple partitions
on USB flash devices. Whereas Linux is agreeable.

Paul

 

[..winston]

"Kenny Cargill" wrote in message Just tried it, set First Boot Device as USB-HDD and it booted directly from
it. Reason I asked is I'm doing a clean install of Win 7 to a new SSD, the
ISO is too big for standard DVDR and I don't have any dual layer discs.

All versions of Windows 7 fit on a single DVD-R (4.7 GB)....i.e. dual layer DVD's are not necessary.