«

Gordon wrote:

>>> it works with memory sticks of all kinds.
>> How many kinds are there? I thought only Sony made Memory Sticks.
>>
> Really, Lawerence. Try the spirit of the posting, and not the need to be
> somewhat "silly". At the least put a in there eh?

Not really, if someone says memory stick and means a USB thumbdrive or
similar then they are providing misleading information.

There are many makers of memory sticks - licened and unlicensed, and
there are also many types of it (I think that the variety of them takes
about half of the formats on the 20something in one reader I have)

Somewhere on teh intarwebs Richard wrote:
> Gordon wrote:
>
>>>> it works with memory sticks of all kinds.
>>> How many kinds are there? I thought only Sony made Memory Sticks.
>>>
>> Really, Lawerence. Try the spirit of the posting, and not the need
>> to be somewhat "silly". At the least put a in there eh?
>
> Not really, if someone says memory stick and means a USB thumbdrive or
> similar then they are providing misleading information.

I wouldn't say 'providing misleading information' as that gives the
impression of deliberate disception. "memory stick" is as good a description
as "thumbdrive" and a lot mare accurate as it's neither a thumb or a drive.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_other...flash_drive%27

See number two on the list?

Now if it'd been capitalised as Larry wrote it then one would expect that it
were a Sony format.
--
Shaun.

"Build a man a fire, and he`ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and
he`ll be warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchett, Jingo.

> There are many makers of memory sticks - licened and unlicensed, and
> there are also many types of it (I think that the variety of them
> takes about half of the formats on the 20something in one reader I
> have)

"Richard" <> wrote in message
news:h1hu6q$v2t$...
> Gordon wrote:
>
>>>> it works with memory sticks of all kinds.
>>> How many kinds are there? I thought only Sony made Memory Sticks.
>>>
>> Really, Lawerence. Try the spirit of the posting, and not the need to be
>> somewhat "silly". At the least put a in there eh?
>
> Not really, if someone says memory stick and means a USB thumbdrive or
> similar then they are providing misleading information.
>
> There are many makers of memory sticks - licened and unlicensed, and there
> are also many types of it (I think that the variety of them takes about
> half of the formats on the 20something in one reader I have)

Lawyering again for Larry D'Loser? Fact is, to all but the hopelessly
pedantic, "memory stick" , "thumb drive", and "flash drive" are generic
terms for NAND-type flash memory devices with a USB interface. If your
client is getting paid by Sony to shill a particular brand name, tell him to
take it elsewhere.

On Jun 18, 10:33*am, Lodi <l...@sogetthis.com> wrote:
> > On Jun 18, 4:22*am, fakename <f...@fake.fak> wrote:
>
> > More to this.... yes, I'm running XP pro, but thats not what I'm trying
> > to boot to via the USB. So I don't see that thats an issue.
>
> > --
>
> Still can't help you sorry. But the reason I mentioned the operating
> system is that you need to access the USB drive to install an
> operating system onto it. And the only way I can see to do that is
> from a running MS/Linux/Apple/etc computer. Hence my mentioning the
> operating system as Ubuntu has a built-in application for just this
> purpose i.e installing Ubuntu to an external USB drive.
>
> If you're looking to purchase an external USB drive with XP/Vista/
> whatever pre-installed then I'm pretty sure that doesn't exist. Happy
> to be proven wrong.
>
> As an aside, don't you need to purchase another licence if you want to
> install an MS operating system onto another device. Can't see them you
> letting you install onto two hard drives when you've only paid for
> one.
>
> Please keep us updated cos I'm pretty sure I haven't quite grasped the
> problem and I'm curious as to how this turns out.
>
> Regards
> Lodi

Its a per computer licence....not per disk as far as I can tell.

regards

Thing

On Jun 19, 2:41*am, fakename <f...@fake.fak> wrote:
> Lodi wrote:
> >> On Jun 18, 4:22 am, fakename <f...@fake.fak> wrote:
>
> >> More to this.... yes, I'm running XP pro, but thats not what I'm trying
> >> to boot to via the USB. So I don't see that thats an issue.
>
> >> --
>
> > Still can't help you sorry. But the reason I mentioned the operating
> > system is that you need to access the USB drive to install an
> > operating system onto it. And the only way I can see to do that is
> > from a running MS/Linux/Apple/etc computer. Hence my mentioning the
> > operating system as Ubuntu has a built-in application for just this
> > purpose i.e installing Ubuntu to an external USB drive.
>
> > If you're looking to purchase an external USB drive with XP/Vista/
> > whatever pre-installed then I'm pretty sure that doesn't exist. Happy
> > to be proven wrong.
>
> > As an aside, don't you need to purchase another licence if you want to
> > install an MS operating system onto another device. Can't see them you
> > letting you install onto two hard drives when you've only paid for
> > one.
>
> > Please keep us updated cos I'm pretty sure I haven't quite grasped the
> > problem and I'm curious as to how this turns out.
>
> > Regards
> > Lodi
>
> I've tried a couple of techniques, examples... format a DOS bootable
> drive and using my Acronis Home Image software to create a bootable
> recovery disk. Both these techniques work if I perform the the operation
> to a memory stick. If I perform the operation to a hard drive everything
> executes smoothly as you would expect. Except when I plug in the hard
> drive to the USB port it wont boot. Memory sticks will.
>
> One more technique I have been doing is what I have been ultimately
> trying to do and that is, install Open Solaris to a hard drive. I plug
> in drive to USB port. Insert Open Solaris disk (DVD type) then install
> to the drive plugged into the USB port. Everything excutes just fine but
> still, it wont boot from the USB port.
>
> If I do the same operation but with the drive pushed into the drive bay
> of my laptop then of course it works just fine but I dont want to be
> ****in around with screw drivers etc each time I want to quickly test a
> multi platform app.
>
> Sun has the Virtual box thing but that seems a tad unstable.
>
> Some people are mentioning they are booting from USB drives but are
> installing some other software to handle botting? Is that correct? If
> so, what happens when you dont actually have the drive in the USB port?
>
> Thanks
> --
> Tane
> real email: t a n e @ m u g w h y . c o m

Add another drive internally? Solaris can be very picky on
hardware....a way round it is to boot VMware's esxi off a 2gb usb key
and install solaris as a virtual machine...you will need a second MS
based computer to do this though. However Vmware ESXi is also picky on
sata controllers and NICs....so it depends on your hardware...

regards

Thing

On Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:41:17 -0700 (PDT), thingy <>
wrote:

>On Jun 19, 2:41*am, fakename <f...@fake.fak> wrote:
>> Lodi wrote:
>> >> On Jun 18, 4:22 am, fakename <f...@fake.fak> wrote:
>>
>> >> More to this.... yes, I'm running XP pro, but thats not what I'm trying
>> >> to boot to via the USB. So I don't see that thats an issue.
>



In my case the BIOS setting for USB is only active if the USB device is
connected and may be bootable..

On Jun 17, 5:09*pm, Lodi <l...@ccr.com> wrote:
<snip>

There are two aspects to look for:

1. Characteristics of the computer's BIOS. There are two
possibilities:
a. If the machine is too old the BIOS may not have the capability.
b. There are two ways of formatting a USB stick or similar device:
i. Like a floppy - there is a boot sector at 0 followed immediately
by a FAT, then root directory.
ii. Like a hard disk - with a MBR and PT followed by (usually) a
single FAT16 or FAT32 partition. There is no theoretical reason why
multiple partitions cannot be used, or alternative file systems such
as NTFS, ext2, ext3, etc. It is possible that non FAT file systems
may impede operation of wear spreading algorithms.

Some BIOS's are fussy and do not like i or ii, I think that i is the
generally disliked one.

2. Assuming 1. is overcome, the stick must actually be bootable.
This requires:
a. Appropriate booting code on the MBR as found on a normal HD. USB
stick MBR's do not necessarily have this code, so it needs to be
'installed' by some means or other.
b. The partition may need to be declared 'bootable' in its partition
table (PT) entry (usually done with 'fdisk' or similar software.
c. Similarly for the boot sector needs to have appropriate boot code.

Information sources on how to do this seem to be chaotic - I am
unaware of the existence of a simple 'Howto' on this.

Hope this helps.

Good luck!

In message <7183d26a-503d-4a32-
b258->, peterwn wrote:

> a. If the machine is too old the BIOS may not have the capability.

Surely either the BIOS supports booting from USB storage devices or it
doesn't.

> b. There are two ways of formatting a USB stick or similar device:
> i. Like a floppy - there is a boot sector at 0 followed immediately
> by a FAT, then root directory.
> ii. Like a hard disk - with a MBR and PT followed by (usually) a
> single FAT16 or FAT32 partition. There is no theoretical reason why
> multiple partitions cannot be used, or alternative file systems such
> as NTFS, ext2, ext3, etc.

In either case, there is bootloader code in sector 0 to be loaded into RAM
and jumped to, which is all the BIOS needs to know. The BIOS knows nothing
about partitioning or filesystems.

> It is possible that non FAT file systems may impede operation of wear
> spreading algorithms.

I don't see how. In any case, wear-spreading operates at the sector level.

In message <h1mjhn$b8s$>, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> In either case, there is bootloader code in sector 0 to be loaded into RAM
> and jumped to, which is all the BIOS needs to know. The BIOS knows nothing
> about partitioning or filesystems.

It turns out there is one difference, namely whether the drive firmware
indicates that the drive is "fixed" or "removable"
<http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=4560>. "Fixed" devices are
treated as hard drives, "removable" ones like floppies.