Need help booting from USB (Dell BIOS)

Animal

I'm currently running a Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop - it's a good few years old, but serves my purpose well.

Here's the problem: I want to run a couple of Live CDs, but my internal CD drive that came with the computer has toasted itself, so it only reads CDs at about 1x speed - therefore booting a live CD is a non-option.

I have both an external CD/DVD drive that works and a USB drive big enough to take the Linux data - but both of these require the ability to boot from the USB port.

I've heard on good authority that the Dell BIOS blocks you from booting from USB purposefully. Does anyone know if this is bypass-able? If not, I know that you can edit the BIOS using the BIOS company's software tools - does anyone have any experience / advice on using this?

Thanks for any input Very Happy

Bones

Have a look in your BIOS for boot sequence or boot device priority or something like that, and see if boot from USB device is one of the options.
If it isn't then AFAIK you'd be out of luck although a bios flash might possibly add this function.

One other thing you might wanna try is pressing F11 or F12 during POST (not sure which key it is on a Dell) and it should bring up a menu asking you which device to boot from

Animal

KHO

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Create_a_DOS_boot_USB_flash_drive

Looks like that has your answer, you will need to install linux to start with i guess, maybe just deal with the extremelly slow speed, but l have found no other way. Good luck with this, hope you have another computer to deal with while that one spends a day or two installing lol.

Animal

kernel_geek

If i can remembre correctly you can use a modified version of dos.

If not there is a program (cant remember the name off it Smile

) that is a live floppy that includes all sorts of utilities, including support for booting usb drives.

sorry for the lack of help, i will get back to you on the name of the prorgam.

Good luck, on fiddling with your bios, i have done something similar before its not to hard but if you can back up your rom before doing it. http://www.modfatha.com/ma_BIOS_savior.html

You could use pxe boot ??

Thats what i did to install gentoo on a cd-less computer.

kernel_geek

I have had a little llok around and pxe boot looks like you best option, and certinally, the cheapest and safest Very Happy

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IceCreamTruck

OK, seems like a lot of people are trying to boot OS over USB, but you are all running into the same basic problem. The bios doesn't contain drivers for USB. In other words the computer is waiting for the OS to load drivers for USB so it can access that hardware. For the most part the bios doesn't even know USB exists, and I've yet to see a computer that gives USB as an option for initial boot.

Yeah you could use dos to boot the computer, load usb drivers, and then you have access to another OS but why are you waisting all that time. Here's what I suggest...ensure that your computer has a viable internal hard drive and load the OS on that drive, and make sure that you have USB drivers installed (comes standard with most OSs) then you can install all of your programs on the USB drive...but wait...why would you want to?

USB is so much slower than even low-end interal hard drives. 5400rpm is low end hard drive speed, 7200rpm is what we've all gotten used to by now, and with SATA drives speeds have jumped to over 10,000 rpms witch is as fast as SCUSI drives on servers. Why take a set back like USB. even USB 2 isn't that much faster than USB 1. The only real plus side to USB is data storage that is portable. You can plug your USB drive up to any computer and you have all of your work, but programs and the OS needs to remain on a faster internal hard drive.

Sorry for ranting, but I just don't understand the need to put an OS on a USB drive. You'll end up waiting for like 15 minutes for your computer to boot off of USB, assuming you get it to work.

OK I did some homework for you guys:
USB 1.0 data transfer rate = 12 mb/s
USB 2.0 data transfer rate = max 480 mb/s
7200rpm internal hard drive transfer rate = 1.3 GB/s
SATA (super ata) internal hard drive transfer rate = 3 GB/s

DO YOU SEE THE BIG JOKE NOW? even if you have USB 2.0 you aren't even getting close to hard drive transfer rates that are the standard now. Keep your OS on a hard drive that will let you get some work done this year and don't wait till next year to figure this out!

kernel_geek

lol, you have completely missed, the point, his cd drive is broken, so he wants to use a usb cd drive, so he can run some live cds, (ones you dont install), and yes the bios does no about usb, especialy if its onboard, most computers have a boot usb option, if a drive is detected, it is probally, blocked, for security, reasons or similar. So what you said has nothing to do with the topic in discussion.

IceCreamTruck

Can he run the live CD from another computer on the network? because the transfer rates still apply! USB is going to be horribly slow. This isn't the only topic on this issue, it's just the second one I came across.

My explanation does apply better to the other topic I read, and I guess I made a mistake because the topic here was similar. Do really know how I ended up over here I meant to post a response to the other topic I just came back from doing something else and thought this was the topic I had read.

The transfer rates still apply though, and maybe this guy should look at getting a new CD drive to install in his laptop. It can be done, and I would considder it if the CD drive on my laptop was broken.

Check this out!! Replacement CD drive for inspiron 8200 and it's only 35 dollars! Wink

kernel_geek

No, actually, it was my idear to use PXE boot, so dont class it as your own, the usb transfer speeds are sufficient to use live cds, as most of the data is loaded into the ram etc. But anyway, as i said previously, i would use pxe boot, editing your bios, is a complicated and tedious task ...
You wouldn't actually be able to boot a shared cd drive as that would require an os ... and you cant boot an os from in an os etc ... Does your laptop support pxe booting, if not there is a boot floppy that boots pxe for you ... (cant remember the name again ... Very Happy

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