Making a 4GB USB drive bootable

[jtr1962]

I finally bought my first USB thumb drive. I've been wanting one for a while, but the prices for a given capacity point were too high for my tastes. Staples had a nice 4GB drive on sale for $29.99 last week. This seemed reasonable, so I bought it.

Anyway, I figured it might be useful to make the drive bootable. According to fdisk, the drive has one primary partition which is active. Doing a sys d: in DOS transferred the system files OK. In theory the drive should now be bootable but it isn't. Setting my system to boot first from USB-HDD didn't work. The system did initially read first from the USB drive but returned a "system files missing" error message. I later read that current systems can't boot from a USB drive unless it's formatted in FAT16. Since FAT16 has a 2GB limit, that basically means no booting from any drive larger than that. I suppose I can use fdisk to partition the drive into 2 equal parts but this seems like a kludge. Any other ideas here?

 

[ddrueding]

IIRC, the OS also needs to support booting from USB, or at least some drivers to support it. What OS are you trying to run? There are a number of Linux Distro how-tos that are very comprehensive.

 

[P5-133XL]

I will assume, since you tell me, that your system requires FAT16 to boot. As a kludge, make the boot partition very small and with MS-Dos, that can be aweful small and then make the second partition as large as possible (Fat32). Make an autoexec.bat file that during bootup switches to the second partition (D:\) and use that partition for all purposes other than booting. Effectively you will have almost the full use of your thumb drive as a single partition.

 

[jtr1962]

What OS are you trying to run? There are a number of Linux Distro how-tos that are very comprehensive.

I'm just interested in booting to DOS for now. XP doesn't have an MS-DOS mode like '98, and I have a few programs I still use which don't work correctly under XP's DOS emulation. In the future I may also want to set up a flash drive to emulate the XP install CD, or perhaps as an emergency boot device with diagnostic software.

I will assume, since you tell me, that your system requires FAT16 to boot. As a kludge, make the boot partition very small and with MS-Dos, that can be aweful small and then make the second partition as large as possible (Fat32).

I'm assuming that my system requires FAT16 on the boot partition of the USB drive based on what I've read. There were a couple of sites which outlined how to make a USB drive bootable, but all mentioned that it must be formatted in FAT16. As far as I know, the ability to boot from a FAT32 USB drive must be implemented in the system's BIOS. Perhaps it is with the latest systems. I was hoping to avoid doing what you mentioned because I've read in a few places that repartitioning/reformatting flash drives can render them inoperative. I just don't want to take the chance.

So there's no workaround here? Has anyone ever been able to make a flash drive with a boot partition larger than 2GB bootable? I was thinking maybe there's a way to make the FAT32 partition boot as if it's FAT16.

 

[ddrueding]

I've made a number of flash drives bootable, using the UBCD or Ubuntu 6.10. Both involved partitioning and reformatting the drives. I don't think it's anything to worry about.

 

[jtr1962]

Well, I tried the procedure here and it worked with a single FAT32 partition. The HP USB Flash Drive Format Tool used the Windows ME system files. Maybe the Win98 system files just don't work for whatever arcane reason? I don't care either way. So long as I can boot into some sort of DOS it's just fine with me. I'm going to try it now using the files on the MS-DOS floppy boot disk created by XP.

 

[jtr1962]

It works with the Win98 system files also. I guess making the drive bootable required a complete reformat rather than just using the sys command.

While I'm at it I might as well put a bunch of diagnostic tools on the drive since there's plenty of space left, even with all my digicam pictures. Thinking about how useful this drive is, can anyone see any reason at all to put a floppy drive on a new system?

 

[udaman]

can anyone see any reason at all to put a floppy drive on a new system?

LOL, Apple hasn't used a floppy drive since the 1990's...can't see any reason why anyone would use M$, and if you did need it you'd just boot up with Bootcamp and run Windoze on the Mac (well you asked ).

 

[ddrueding]

I haven't built a system with a floppy in many years, my systems haven't had floppy drives installed since before 100MB ZIP drives.

 

[Mercutio]

You might get more utility out of a BartPE USB boot drive or a Linux boot drive.

 

[LOST6200]

Since FAT16 has a 2GB limit, that basically means no booting from any drive larger than that. I suppose I can use fdisk to partition the drive into 2 equal parts but this seems like a kludge. Any other ideas here?

FAt16 cfan be 4GB with 64kb clusters.