Booting an OS from a USB flash drive

Still_Learning · Post by **Still_Learning** » 08 Jul 2008, 20:58

I recently have been trying to boot my PC from damn small linux, i googled, irc'd, tryed diffrent ways to boot the usb, all kinds of things that are not working.. can someone please help?!?!

I have a 256MB flash drive i would like to set up to use on a computer to boot with.

I tried and everytime i try it keeps going to the original OS. All I would like to do is put my USB flash drive in my pc and boot from that instead of windows, it sounds like it should be an easy task but i am not having much luck.

I tried copying the .iso directly to the usb card , and it did not work, tried extracting the files to the usb and booting and it did not work. I went to bios and tried every USB option for each thing and it did not work.

I would just like to put in my USB card (256 megs) and boot it from anywhere, i tried all 4 options everyway i could.. USB-ZIP, USB-FLOPPY. - USB_HDD, ect.. this is not working, help a brother out

please hook me up with some kind of tutorial or something so i can just put the usb card into the pc , boot it and have the start up option to boot from my USB. I tried all the F-keys, please also consider that the machine the USB card is going into is very old. Even if i just had the linux kernal installed with basic commands that would be cool. eaither way plz tell me how to boot from a USB some some kind of linux OS that is easy on memorys.

Post by **bad_brain** » 09 Jul 2008, 04:44

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/inde ... lash_Drive

Post by **floodhound2** » 09 Jul 2008, 08:22

Funny you mention this. I have been working on a portable opsystem and it is working great.

Some downsides that you may experience is that the PC must be USB bootable. You can check this by booting into the BIOS and setting it to do such. Of all the testing I have done I found that some Toshiba laptops will not allow the USB boot to work. Otherwise I am having great success.

Also when you download the operating system you have to create an installation CD or DVD from the downloaded .iso. Once this is done you can boot up using the disk and then create the USB operating system.

Feel free to PM me for more information

Still_Learning · Post by **Still_Learning** » 09 Jul 2008, 21:00

bad_brain wrote:http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/inde ... lash_Drive

I tryed this, (word for word) it should have worked i would think right?

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2007/01/02 ... e-usb-dsl/

not working, i will also research the link you provided, i guess i am impatient to reading alot and was trying the quickest fix way.

Could it not have worked because when i bought the flash drive it was not the real size? somehow some dealer in china flashed it to make it look like a 8 GB drive when it is really a 256MB flashdrive, for some reason i cant format it back to the original size. it wont let me.

Damn small linux is well under 256 MB's though and i have used the card before , as long as it is 256 MB or under it works correctly so far. I ordered another 4 GB pen drive though i should be receiving soon, if it is not really 4GB i will be pissed.

Floodhound2, you have mail.

Post by **floodhound2** » 09 Jul 2008, 22:05

Read my PM

Post by **pseudo_opcode** » 10 Jul 2008, 21:35

I have a phoenix/Award Bios v6.0 and the usb boots with USB-HDD, but in some versions its USB-ZIP, so try them all

You have to make the drive bootable, simply extracting the image files wont work,

recently i had to install debian, and i took apart my DVD drive for the laser diode

( i know i m crazy)

I used HP usb utility and it worked for me, i downloaded the debian boot.img.gz file and extracted it, and used hp utility to make my pendrive bootable, i then put the iso on pendrive and everything went fine.

Still_Learning · Post by **Still_Learning** » 13 Jul 2008, 17:23

I think i know what the problem is, it is that im useing some fucked up chinese USB drive i got that was cheap , ebay said it was an 4GB pen drive , i got it and just to test it and tried to install 4 gigs of stuff on there to make sure, and sure enough was bamboozled by another chinese punk that uses like a 1 gig or 256 mb drive and some how makes it look like it is 4 or 8 gigs. Im never buying another USB drive off of ebay again, or anything from china for that fact. this is the 2nd one!!!

Next time im going to bestbuy down the street where i seen a 2GB flash drive for 15$, same price i payed for the fake 4GB and 8GB drives from china i got, which i cant even reformat to the real size. How the fuck do they do that!?! i tried everything and it continues to say it is 8 gb on one and 4gb on the other, i tried every format method

drivying me crazy, FUCK CHEAP CHINESE USB DRIVES AND PRODUCTS.

sorry had to vent lol but if you know how they do that or how to change it back to the original size please let me know, thanks

Post by **floodhound2** » 13 Jul 2008, 19:53

lol it may be operator error

Still_Learning · Post by **Still_Learning** » 13 Jul 2008, 20:24

floodhound2 wrote:lol it may be operator error

Possibly, but I have no evidence of that so far.. Im thinking it is something done to the drive by that scam artist chinese dude that sold me a 256 meg flash drive that can only format as a 8 gig drive in windows and linux both. If you know how i can format it like they did to the real size please dont hold back info.

We both dont write in weird chinese symbols. I even have articles on ebay that say chinese are scamming people with these flash drives and spoofing them to look larger then the file size is.

On my fake usb drive i can copy all the files i want up to whatever size it says it is, but they wont work and will be 0 bytes, if i only record say 250 megs of files on to it, then it will work,

im thinking somehow that these fucked up partitions, that is set on these usb's is causeing it not to boot the OS properly because of the fake partition problem.

************ IF YOU KNOW HOW TO FIX THE USB TO THE REAL SIZE PLEASE HELP *******************

Fuck it, I am going to buy a REAL size , high quality USA made USB drive that is not size spoofed from best buy and use that, these fucked up usb drives i get from strange china sellers that are GB/size spoofed and dont work properly for booting and OS from them.

I never should of bought shit from china anyways, fuck china with all their lead paint, fake USB's, cardboard they mix in their food for mass production of chinese food in America, I no longer trust their products, I'm buying local

Post by **bad_brain** » 14 Jul 2008, 04:43

that's nothing new, a few years ago it was the same with AMD CPUs, they sold 1800+ ones as 2400+ ones on ebay...
ebay is maybe good to sell stuff, but I never would buy anything there....I had an account on ebay for exactly 1 day, I wanted to buy a mainboard and when I won the bid I discovered the REALLY small printed stuff on the VERY bottom saying "you bid for the package and NOT for the mainboard"...I closed my account and told the seller I'll sue his ass and beat him up if he dares to contact me for the payment (never heard from him again).

USB sticks became really cheap, 1 GB already go for 5 bucks...and 4 GB 15-20 bucks for a well-known brand one, and when buying it in the local computer store you know where to find them when something is wrong....

Still_Learning · Post by **Still_Learning** » 15 Jul 2008, 00:19

Yes, I had to learn the hard way i gues s

Do you have any idea on how to change it back to the original size?

formatting does not work

Post by **bad_brain** » 15 Jul 2008, 04:44

hm, no idea...

but I don't recommend to use that device anymore at all, nobody knows in what way it has been manipulated, it could even cause hardware damage.
save it as x-mas present for someone you don't really like and get a decent USB stick at your local hardware store or from amazon instead...

Post by **floodhound2** » 15 Jul 2008, 08:17

bad_brain wrote:hm, no idea...
but I don't recommend to use that device anymore at all, nobody knows in what way it has been manipulated, it could even cause hardware damage.
save it as x-mas present for someone you don't really like and get a decent USB stick at your local hardware store or from amazon instead...

Your an ass b_b Ill remember this when getting your xmas present!

Post by **DNR** » 15 Jul 2008, 09:13

You could keep it, take it apart to learn how it works

B_B has a valid point on questionable USB memorysticks. The USB stick is not just a memory dump, but it has its own controller. That controller can be just like your harddrive controller - it figures out how and where to store data on the bigger chip. But, it can also be sneaky and contain another program, a crypto tool, a malware tool, even a RAT if they wanted.
This controller on your usb stick could have been tampered with to say it has a larger data cap.

Your choices for fixing the stick are scandisk and format, most use FAT and FAT32 as the file system. I haven't looked but I assume there are disassembly tools that will decode and program the controller.

BTW, looking through the specs on USB sticks, there is a write protect system, if you get a 'free promotional' USB stick what comes preloaded with a company's brochure and logos - they can activate a write protection - usually by cutting a link, a wire or trace on the circuitboard. If you can find and repair this, you can reformat it!
(see #7 in above image)

DNR

Still_Learning · Post by **Still_Learning** » 16 Jul 2008, 19:41

Thanks, but yes i have concluded that it is because the flash cards are cheap chinese BULLSHIT.

I am going to get some real AMERICAN MADE USB DRIVES which are way better quality then that chinese scam drive spoofing bullshit they have been shipping around the world. They manufacture alot of everybodys shit and add lethal stuff to it on purpose to destroy all our youth. (like lead)

So from what i understand from what you all said, is that there is a ROM (read only memory) chip somewhere in the USB programmed to make it that size and theres not much i can do about it. It may also contain some kind of trojan, malware, or RAT also..

this is some serious shit, because think of all the shit china makes for all the countries , imagine if they make a chip that can spy on you threw your camera phone whenever they want, or listen, or whatever just think of all the features our phone has that could have a chinese trojan of some sort thats undetectable and use that ability in a malicious way, to use GPS to see where you are at all times, look threw your camera phone to see whats going on, use the built in microphone feature to transmit sound of what people are saying.. maybe i am to paranoid, but this seems possible to me, and i dont want earth to be lke that