OpenSUSE Hardware :: Borked 16gb Usb Drive As A Boot Stick
Feb 5, 2010
I decided to use my 16gb usb drive as a boot stick for a new opensuse install by doing what the doc said to do i.e. "dd if=USBdrive of=ISO bs=4M" which worked great and all, but now I want the drive to do something else besides act like a cd with openSUSE on it. I can't figure out how to delete or write anything to it, because it's now read-only. Remounting hasn't worked but it's possible i'm not understanind how the mount command works, but I have tried "mount -rw /USB /MOUNTPLACE" and also with a couple of different filesystem types like usbfs & vfat.
I have an existing WinXP install on the main drive (/dev/sda) of a Dell laptop. I installed Suse on the second (caddy tray) drive and didn't touch the existing windows partition during install.
After install completed, I found there was no boot loader entry for WinXP during startup. Only SUSE-related stuff. I opened YaST boot loader and tried creating an entry of type "other" and device of "/dev/sda1" and set this as the default entry.
The /boot/grub/menu.lst file now has an entry:
When I restart the machine I get an error message:
I've been trying to partition my USB pen drive but for some reason it won't make a partition any bigger than 1 gig. The reason I formatted it was for compatibility with a friends Windows computer that wouldn't recognise it while it was NTFS (so I tried FAT16, but it still wouldn't recognise it for some strange reason.)
Anyway, after partitioning it to FAT, I partitioned it back to NTFS and shortly after tried to put Ubuntu onto it using unetbootin. During the writing process, Ubuntu locked up and I had to hard reset. (even the reisub trick did nothing) After restarting, I noticed the pen drive was showing as only 1gb big.
I don't really know if the crash caused it, because it might have been 1gb after I had reformatted to NTFS (I just didn't check).
I've since reformatted and repartitioned it using ext3/4, ntfs, FAT and it's the same every time. Also, I've tried to use unetbootin again on the 1gig partition, and it will work, but if I try to boot up off it on my netbook, it says "Missing operating system" and then boots off the hard drive.
Lastly, when I do format it, there doesn't seem to be any kind of permissions on the pen drive until I run chown on it. Then I can write to it normally.
This is a really strange problem.. I'm almost inclined to think the pen drive might just be broken and I'll need to take it back to the shop. (Withdrawing any information about the whole repartitioning it..)
I'm getting a netbook with no cd/dvd drive but it boots off of usb, so I've made a slackware 13 usb stick to start the install. I also have a usb hard drive I was going to copy the packages to. I'm wondering... should I boot with the usb install stick and then connect the usb hard drive afterwards?
OK, was trying to make a live-usb boot partition on my 1.5TB HD; in doing so clicked a 'wipe disk' button.
A second later I realised what I'd done, clicked cancel (frantically), tried to unmount the drive but was told 'volume busy'. In a panic, unplugged the drive. Unsurprisingly, the drive is now a mess.
I'd had 1 30G FAT32 partition (empty) at sdd1, 1 1.5TB ext4 partition with about 500G of data at sdd2. Now according to gparted I have an unrecognised filesystem type; according to the 'Disk Utility' I have an unmountable 1.5TB FAT32 drive.
I know NOTHING about data recovery. If it's just a case of running a couple of magic 'check & fix' programs then I should be OK, but anything else and I'll have to take it to more skilled friends.
When I plug the the card into the DV7's internal MMC/SD card slot, it automounts as /dev/mmcbkl0p1.
I can then access files (camera images) on the card with Dolphin, etc.
When I plug the card into an external card reader(USB interface), automount fails and I can see a long string of messages from dmesg. It is attempting to mount it as /dev/sdd, I see numerous I/O errors as it attempts to read various sectors.
The card reader is a Kingston FCR-HS219/1.
The 16GB SDHC card in the Kingston card reader combo works on my WinXP machine, so (apparently) the combo does work.
A 2GB SD card (FAT16) in the Kingston reader works on both WinXP and the HPDV7 11.3 laptop.
i have a 4gb kingston 'ur drive' usb stick but i am unable to delete files from it. i have another usb stick a PNY 8gb stick whick works ok, but not the 4gb.
I've followed the instructions at Live USB stick - openSUSE for creating a bootable USB stick. I have attempted this with both a 32 bit and 64 bit image. Unfortunately my system will not boot up the stick - it just loads my hard disk as normal.
Background info 1. I have checked the iso images against the checksum and they are ok; 2. I have used the same images to create bootable CDs which work fine; 3. My machine IS capable of booting a USB stick - by copying syslinux onto the stick, the machine does see the stick 4. The order of boot in BIOS is stick first. Again, I have proven this works ok using a utility called USB Boot Tester.
I am unsure what to try next. I recall reading on this forum there was a problem booting from USB stick if the computer also had a CD drive. That was in an early version of LiveCD. Could the problem still be extant? I can't find the actual thread unfortunately otherwise I would link to it.
I just built a 11.3 live usb stick using kde amd64 image. I can go through a full boot up, but when X start I get a blank srceen(Samsung SyncMaster PX2370) on my desktop. I really do not know where to start.
I borked my perfectly good 11.2 install, while replacing a failing hard drive. I reinstalled, and now my sound doesn't work - or not quite. I get the left front channel, nothing else. Battle Duel crashes due to sound errors - or I probably wouldn't care.
Dual Booting my laptop and unable to change the Boot Records on the drive. Not because I dont know how, but my primary OS will fail to boot(win7).
I have drive partitioned as follows... sda1 = Win7 system (default install) sda2 = Win7 Main (default install) sda3 = swap sda4 = Extension (I think thats what its called) sda5 = / (ext4)
What I need is a boot cd or perferably Grub installed on a 256MB Thumb drive with the options to load the installed system from sda5.
I have a Dell laptop with Windows XP installed, and for various reasons (Help: I borked my WindowsXP boot when installing OpenSUSE 11.3) I can not install a GRUB boot loader to the first hard drive (hd0).
I currently have a second hard drive in this laptop with a perfectly working OpenSUSE 11.3 instance, but no way to boot into it. I remember back in ancient times, a common option with Linux distros was to create a boot floppy to boot into Linux rather than installing GRUB or LILO to MBR. Since this laptop doesn't have a floppy drive I'd like to do the same thing with a USB stick. Is there any way to install GRUB (or something similar) to a USB stick? What I am not asking here is whether I can put a full, bootable Linux instance on a USB drive - I only want a boot loader on USB that launches to the appropriate mount point on (hd1).
borked the bootloader by my own doing. When I got this machine, I had a single HDD. I partitioned it with a primary partition for Windows, followed by an extended partition with swap, /home/ and /, as well as a FAT32 partition for "general" data. (this was before NTFS write support was common) This worked well with the Win2K install. Eventually, I added a second HDD, which became part data storage, and part Windows XP install. I eventually put Win7 on it, and pulled the other HDD during setup so that the boot order of the drives determines whether I boot Win7/XP or get GRUB.
However, my "data" partition was not visible in Win7... It shows up as an unknown FS in the disk management. OK, I thought. I used Paragon partitioning software to move the "data" partition out of the extended partition and make it a primary. I could now access it from Win7. I didn't realize I had GRUB set to boot from the extended partition, so now when I boot from that HDD, I get "no operating system". No problem, I thought. I'll pop in the install CD (NET), use it to boot the installed 11.3, and run the boot loader setup. Nope- setup just hangs. Tried it with an 11.2 DVD... doing a "boot installed system" nets me a few moments of searching, "evaluating root partition", and then "no valid linux install found". Trying the boot loader reinstall from there nets me an "error changing to target environment" and the install fails.
I can still mount the / partition via rescue mode and all files appear to be intact, so I don't think I've lost any data... just grub/the MBR is borked. I've already moved the data partition back in to the extended partition but no luck. Still the same story... thus I'm stuck booting Windows until I fix this.
When I start bluej and try to open files from my memory stick the memory stick is not available. Is there any way that I can open files directly in bluej from my memory stick.
I have searched and read threads about the Bitlocker, grub and TPM issues that might show up, but I can't draw any conclusions as some information contradict each other. To make sure I don't screw up my pc as thought I need to make a new post.
At work I'm supposed to run Windows 7 and encrypt the win-partition with Bitlocker. I have installed Windows, turned on the encryption and it ties into the TPM. But as I am moving over to the *nix department I want to run Ubuntu as dual boot to check everything rusn fine with all the systems I need. Before I installed Windows I partioned the disk:
1,5 GB for system/bitlocker requirement 147 GB for Windows, C: 85 GB which is empty where I intend to install Ubuntu (not formated yet)
I boot into Windows with my bitlocker/TPM key on an USB-stick. Without the usb-stick the pc won't boot. Now, before I try to install Ubuntu I want to make sure to do it the right so I don't mess up the Windows installation or won't be able to boot the pc at all.
There seem to be several "schools" to this. Some suggest I should have installed Ubuntu first, then Windows and then encrypt. Some say, no worries just fire away and install since you are not planning to read the windows-partition from Ubuntu. Or an alternative, install but make sure to deactive the encryption during installation. Some say, install but make sure grub is installed in (multiple choices) location.
I have a 2Gb DT Kingston secure USB stick which somehow I have contrived to partially reformat using Gparted - however it now only shows 15Mb of unallocated space and that's it - I cannot seem to get the full empty 2Gb back again.
Is it because it used to have windows based secure software on it - has it 'locked down' the drive so it's now useless?
I have a couple of laptops without hard drives lying around; and I'd like to use them with ubuntu studio. Ubuntu studio doesn't have a live image, so I can't use any of the millions of "copy live-cd ISO to usb" instructions I'm finding all over the web. I only want to use them with creox, but I figure I'll need the real-time kernel as well.
I have installed Isadora on 8gb USB drive. getting to like this OS.a lot. Problem is I will soon be running out of space and lack speed. I would like to transfer all my data and downloads to my hard drive permanently. Can I make my memory stick installable?
I have a newly built desktop with not disk drive yet. I just put Ubuntu 9.10 onto a flash drive successfully and booted it onto my desktop. It boots up the Installer boot menu and asks me if i want to run Ubuntu from the USB or Save it to hard drive. I select save to hard drive but when i turn the pc off and take out the flashdrive Ubuntu does not stay on the machine?
when I am trying to copy any of my files to usb stick, it gives me this alert: the folder cannot be copied because you do not have permissions to create it in the destination.
I wanted to back up my 4Gb boot drive and the new drive I had was slightly smaller. Couldn't find any info on here and precious little on the internet but I have previously used this technique to clone an 8Gb disk onto a 4Gb one. Since I have gained a lot of useful info from this forum over the years its probably time I contributed something. I used my netbook but this would work equally well from a live CD. Note the disk has to be unmounted so you can't use the live system. Firstly your USB stick probably has 2 partitions one for "/" and one for swap.
The first step is to reduce the "/" partition on the source drive to a size smaller than your target drive. I used gparted for this. Next create a partition on your target drive that is the same size or bigger than your newly shrunken partition. I formatted this although I'm not sure this is necessary. Personally I just used the whole drive and used a file on a hard disk as swap. Next you have to use dd to copy the partition.What is important is that you are copying the partition not the drive. So your source would be /dev/sdx1 and target /dev/sdy1 (you will need to find your own values for x&y).
Once again be very careful that you get these the right way around or you will destroy your souce disk. Even better do it in two stages - copy your source to a file and then the file to the target. Now you have a replica of your original disk but it is not bootable. If you are planning to use a swap partition you may as well create it now. Remember you will probably have to change /etc/fstab to read the new swap - at least on my system this was referenced by UUID. No need to change anything for the replicated partition as the UUID came over with everything else.
I installed Kubuntu 8.04.2 Live CD on a USB flash drive using a software program called Unetbootin (from Gentoo), and I can successfully boot into the OS with no problem but I am not able to save any changes such as preferences, because once I reboot, everything I changed or installed is lost. I guess this is because the OS is dumped into RAM and all of my changes were made in RAM instead of the USB flash drive.
My question would be is there a way (keeping my present configuration) I can save any changes to the USB flash drive so that when I reboot, the changes will stick?
I've tried for some time now to get my Zen 16GB working properly with Ubuntu 10.04. I've tried Rhythmbox and this works for mp3s but album art is not transferring. I have latest 0.13 Rhythmbox and now at leat the mp3's go in directories under Music, but the .alb file is put a root and not ar is displayed.
I have tried gnomad2 and the latest (2.9.4?) crashes with 10.04 when reading the Zen. I can't drag and drop in nautilus and the it is connected as gphoto and the tags are not copied over. So, for all you Zen users.. how are you trandfering mp3's (with album art!) over to your Zen's?
After I boot the 16GB second SSD disk is mounted as HOME on /media This seems to be a default. However there is no entry in /etc/fstab to do this. How does it happen?
I want to move my home directories to be on the 16GB disk so I need it to be mounted on /home rather than where it is by default which is /media/HOME
I have a transcend pendrive USB of 16 GB . I installed Linux ubuntu and i am able to allot only 4gb for working with linux ubuntu. I want to utilize my maximum space of 16gb USB.Can i alot more disk space for Linux in my USb ?
My motherboard uses nVidia's nForce 570 SLI chipset. It has 2 ethernet ports. I've installed RedHat EL4 update 7 (kernel 2.6.9-78.0.13) and used "up2date" to get the latest package updates. With only 8GB RAM, the ethernet ports function properly. If I add another 8GB RAM, total of 16GB, the ethernet ports no longer function properly. They won't initialize.