[Mageia-discuss] Bootable external drive

[John Bowden]

On Thursday 27 Sep 2012 09:21:10 Phil wrote:
> On 26/09/12 20:32, John Bowden wrote:
> > As far as I know unenetbooting does not work with our iso's, its a long
> > time erm undocumented feature ;) you can use the DD command, there is
> > even a DD for widoz.
> 
> Thanks everyone for your replies,
> 
> I think there might be a hardware issue somewhere. The laptop detects
> USB sticks (and e-book readers) and reports that the device isn't
> bootable however the USB hard drive is simply ignored. So there must be
> some subtle difference between the mechanical drive and a USB stick.
> 
> The Internet is awash with tutorials on how to create a bootable
> external drive but, in my case, unless the external drive is mounted
> it's not detected and the BIOS is set to boot from an external drive.
> 
> I'm reluctant to try my drive on someone else's computer because if
> anything goes wrong, even six years later, it will be my fault.
> 
> I don't think Tuxboot or DD would offer a solution.

You might find the ext hd is a bit slow at initalizing and spinning up to 
speed, a usb drive does not have to spin up disks. Try powering on the laptop 
and if it does not see the ext hd do a soft reboot (ALT CTRL + DEL).
Also make sure the bios is set to boot ext usb first before looking at other 
boot devices. If you have the ext hd plugged in and powered up while in the 
bios screen it might offer you the ext hd IF you are very lucky!
Regards John (Led43_???)
-- 
Registered Linux user number 414240

Guy Faulks the only person to enter the Parliament with honest intentions and 
he was going to blow them up !