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Booting from USB Drives?

Posted by Cliff on from the yet-another-boot-device dept.

GilesP asks: "With so many USB flash drives around (like the pendrive, Targus Go-Anywhere, and others), and with the demise of the floppy disk, I began to wonder if it would be possible to boot from a USB drive? So your BIOS is going to need to support booting from a USB device, but what else would be involved? I'm primarily thinking about Linux here, but other OSes would be interesting too. These devices come in a range of sizes from 8Mb up to 1Gb, so there is plenty of room to hold a Linux installation. Has anybody done anything like this?"

1 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. Booting from USB drive by SpatchMonkey · · Score: 0, Redundant
    Yes, it is a possibility, except that your BIOS would need to support:
    1. Recognition of USB hard drive
    2. Booting from said hard drive
    It is the BIOS that needs this because it is the last code to be run before booting into an OS.