Using USB memory key as boot directory for older computer?

[Jon Pruente]

On a second note, for those who want to do a full install to flash
media of any sort, it's best to NOT use swap space on the device.
Flash media has limited write cycles and running swap on it will run
down your devices lifetime.  If you have a (somewhat) disposable
device, putting swap on it may speed up your system a little, but it
might also lead to memory errors in the future.  Keep an eye out on
all those guys running ReadyBoost in Vista, as it's a long term file
caching system and does not do a bunch of R/W operations like swap
does.

Jon.

On 6/28/07, Jon Pruente <jdpruente at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've just started playing with FreeNAS (well, it's BSD...), and it
> shows USB thumb drives as a regular USB mas storage just like it would
> in Linux.  My mobo just boots right from it as it would a regular ATA
> HD or CD drive.  I know occasionally one might need a certain program
> (syslinux) to write boot blocks for the drive, but for the most part
> with a newish thumb drive it should "just work".
>
> I've got plans to play with DSL and Puppy and others on a thumb drive
> at some point soon.
>
> Jon.
>
> On 6/28/07, Brian Kelsay <ripcrd at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 6/28/07, Jonathan Hutchins <> wrote:
> > > On Thursday 28 June 2007 06:50:17 am Leo Mauler wrote:
> > >
> > > > Can anyone direct me to some assistance in getting a
> > > > distribution installer (CD distribution) to recognize
> > > > the USB memory key at boot time, so that it can be
> > > > used as /boot? Also, does the USB key need to be
> > > > initialized as bootable before beginning the Linux
> > > > installation?
> > >
> > > Does the BIOS allow booting from a USB device?  If not, it's not going to
> > > work.  I suppose you could boot off of a floppy, and redirect to either the
> > > USB or HD.
> >
> > He said it would boot to USB.  On modern mobos, you toggle this in the
> > BIOS to put the USB first in line.  Oh, Leo, you shouldn't have to do
> > anything to the USB pendrive to make it bootable other than format it
> > as ext2/3 if you want to.  They all start out life as Fat32, due to
> > their size and expected use in a Winders box.  you should be able to
> > leave it as Fat32 as long as your fstab identifies it correctly and
> > sets it as r/w, but you may prefer to change to Ext2/3.  :-)   Not
> > sure if you should not do the journaling on the drive and just do
> > Ext2. Anyone else have thoughts on this?
> >
> > Brian
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>