Boot UBCD4Win from USB thumbdrive?!! Options

[SteelTrepid]

This is a question many people have emailed me and posted in the forum. It's a great idea and I would really love to see it happen some day. Some people have reported being successful booting BartPE or UBCD4Win on USB, but rarely give enough details to help others.

SO, I had the idea to create a team! I have talked to a few and they think it's a good idea, as long as there are people willing to spend some time and help.

Is anyone interested?

Here is my plan:
1. assemble a team
2. create a "hidden" category in the forum
3. I have some links, articles, posts in other forums, etc. for them to check out.....team members will need to research these references and try those methods
4. they will then work together and post in "their" category: results, notes, successes, etc.
5. hopefully a "fool proof" method will be figured out in some time
6. once a (or possibly a few) methods are found the information will be posted to the "public" forum for EVERYONE to read and try
7. finally, hopefully the "USB Team" will have time to answer any questions and help troubleshooting in the "public" USB area in the forum

I and many others would greatly appreciate anyone's help with this. I am looking for individuals that are willing to spend several hours for a few weeks trying to find a good method to accomplish this. After a method is found and posted to the public, I would appreciate it if the USB Team members could check in to help answer questions and help troubleshoot with others.

Finally, this project. I started this project to help people (damn, I really am sounding like a broken record). I want this project to be as great as possible and i try my best. However there are many aspects where I need help. I greatly appreciate the time you have spent reading this post and hope that you are willing to help the project, other users, and me. Thank You! (IMG:http://www.ubcd4win.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[pcuser]

Count me in (IMG:http://www.ubcd4win.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Tom

[SteelTrepid]

Well, you will already have access to it all since you are a Mod!! Hopefully we can create a team pretty quickly so we can start getting this done. Beta Testers will also have access to this area as I have the feeling some of them may want to play with this idea also.

I do have one person that emailed me a few days ago about booting from USB and he was interested. Now I just need to dig through my email and see if any of the others that asked about it are interested.

Team total (as of now): 2

Thanks Tom!

[dirkgently42]

Ben, it would be awesome to have the portability and speed benefits that USB 2.0 thumbdrives have over standard CD and DVD media.

USB 2.0 is faster than USB 1.0 by leaps and bounds.

I have read some information on this topic from web searches and from discussions on 911cd and I have been disappointed.

I have concluded that some people have had success provided that their "modern" hardware (BIOS) actually supported USB BOOT and that those who had success used USB media from specific vendors. I.E. , corporate USB drives designed for use as passkeys, rather than primarily as storage.? $$$$$

I don't have any links to support my claims or dispute the merits of such an endeavor. I could be wrong... I may have misinterpreted what I have read???
The info that I have read is freely available and directly accesible via google.

The concept is very cool and I would be the first to drop carrying CD's versus a thumbdrive, but I think that existing USB media is not designed to support what is desired. I have seen some success concerning Linux boot disks.

If anything comes of this it will be a lucky hack and will most likely not work for everyone.

Is there a USB 3.0 around the horizon that will provide BIOS independant support, portability, and the speed increase we desire over CD/DVD ROM? Those that report a successful boot from a thumbdrive state that it boots much slower than a CD anyway.

Could there be a totally different form of media coming that will provide the answer?
What if there was a firewire device with similar specs, but with none of the limitations of USB thumbdrives? Many mainstream software vendors are supporting PE. What if a major hardware manufacturer were to be persuaded to offer a specific high speed PE hardware device designed for optimal boot time and portability? PE seems to be a very popular trend that has influenced software vendors. Why not hardware vendors?

For now, I think the flaw is in the engineering specifications of current USB thumbdrive media. I think it would be fruitless to form any kind of team to develope a solution to work around inherent flaws of a device standard that cannot do what you want it to do. USB thumbdrives are primarily designed for storage. Maybe there is an "El-Torito" type of thing, as with CD's, that would allow thumbdrives to boot as CD's do? Dunno.

My two pennies.... (IMG:http://www.ubcd4win.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[SteelTrepid]

Well, I greatly appreciate your response. You probably voiced several concerns that others would have.

Using a different hardware device is not going to be possible. I'm pretty sure that very few mobo's allow booting from a firewire port, it took manufacturers too long to add the functionality for USB devices. Hardware is a very tough market. It is expensive and you need support from many vendors to get a device or port started. I don't know of a USB 3.0, I could have missed something though. I highly doubt that anyone would continue to invest in USB. I think a new port will come before a USB 3.0 would come out. Also, FireWire is slightly faster than USB 2.0.

I understand your disappointment greatly, probably am more disappointed than you are! I have to explain this lack of support to many users of the project, it's more than a personal issue to me.

I also do not know if I totally agree with your slow boot time when using USB devices. I could swear I've read many posts reporting that it is lightening fast! Think about the mechanical versus electronic differences when thinking about CD's compared to USB, and transfer rates.

I understand these problems and concerns, however I don't want to give up! I really think that we can figure out how to do this. I really wish I had the time to figure it out on my own, but that may not net good results either. A team is needed to make sure that our method will work on different hardware (USB drives and mobo's). This may take some time, but I really hope we can get this figured out!! I really hope there are a lot of users interested and willing to spend several hours a week for a while until we get this figured out.

[pcuser]

USB booting IS possible with ubcd4win and it's not as hardware dependant as Google searches might lead you to believe (as far as the usb sticks go anyway, the bios is a different story).

I think that in most cases, if your bios has an option to boot from usb then you can most likely boot ubcd4win from a usb stick, it's just a matter of figuring out the software details.

Here's why I think this way...

I have a Sandisk Cruiser 1gb stick that I wanted to use for this purpose. I have a compaq Sempron 3000+ (wallmart-special) that I used for testing, it just wants to sit at a blinking curser (forever) instead of booting ubcd4win via usb. It boots to dos just fine though via usb (win 98 or me system files).

I've read many posts on the internet stating the same problem that I'm having (blinking curser forever but no boot).

Maybe I should've called it quits at this point but I knew that it had to be a software issue since I can boot dos/win89/winme bootdisks via usb.

Here's what I did...

I used Knoppix to "zero" out the drive (using "dd") then used cfdisk to create a fat32 partition on the usb drive and make it bootable. I tried a few other things but I don't think that they had any affect. I think the key element here might have been "making the partition bootable".

Then I booted into windows and followed Barts instructions (again) and to my surprise, it started booting! When using this method, it loads the entire ISO image into RAM.
It took about 16 minutes to get to the point that it rebooted (because I only had 256mb RAM and I needed over 400mb) and I'm assuming that the slow booting is because my bios boots usb at 1.1 speeds.

This is just the results of a single usb drive running on a single computer but I really think that the major problem is with software and not with the hardware

I'm going to add some more RAM and do some more testing... I'll post my results back here.

Tom

[pcuser]

OK, I got it booting. I don't have enough ram to boot ubcd4win but BartPE boots just fine.

I have 512mb of ram with onboard video taking up 64mb of it so my next step is to build a "stock" ubcd4win iso (with none of my usual customizations, addons, etc...) and see if I can get it to boot with 512mb ram.

Here's what I've learned so far:

1. It's very slow booting but seems to do ok once it's booted.

2. Your usb drive needs to have a "normal" mbr and the partition needs to be set to "active".

3. You need plenty of ram.

I also want to zero out my usb stick again so I can boot Freedos with usb support and use the fdisk utility to see it that method works to make it bootable instead of having to boot linux and use cfdisk.

I'll post my results...

Tom

[pcuser]

I still can't get ubcd4win to boot, it just reboots the computer after the iso image is almost completely loaded. The pe2usb script says that I should be able to boot it on systems with at least 486mb of memory. I went into the bios and reduced the shared video ram to 8mb. This still only leaves 18mb (out of my 512mb) for ubcd4win and the ramdrive. That's not going to work!

I have another 256mb chip that I could use if this computer only had a third ram slot (IMG:http://www.ubcd4win.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

I guess that I'm at a standstill until I can get a 512mb ram stick and see if I can get it to boot with 768mb.

Tom

[dirkgently42]

Here's an interesting thread on the subject.
Scroll down to see the thread.

Jaclaz from 911CD posted in the above thread and suggested his helpful guide.
(IMG:http://www.ubcd4win.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[pcuser]

Thanks for the helpful links (IMG:http://www.ubcd4win.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I actually came across the "EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT BOOTING FROM AN USB PENDRIVE ... AND DARED TO ASK" guide last night and read it, it was helpful indeed.

I have ubcd4win booting from usb now, it was just that I didn't have enough ram. All I had to do was remove e few of the bigger plugins and it booted.

It takes a while to boot but everything loads in a flash once it's booted! In fact, I'd quit using cd's all together if it wasn't for the long boot time.

Now I'm going to try to use tools from the cd to zero out the drive and create/prepare the partition.

I'll make a "how-to" when I'm done.

Tom

[JamesIEvans]

I have ubcd4win booting from usb now, it was just that I didn't have enough ram.  All I had to do was remove a few of the bigger plugins and it booted.

Hmmm . . .

So it is not just the size of the pen drive that you have to worry about, you also have to worry about the amount of RAM you have. Anything less than 512 MB won't work, right?

From reading the guide that you linked to, it sounds like the brand of pen drive is a factor as well. You have to find the right formating utility. Some are brand specific.

This is starting to sound like the quest for the holy grail. (IMG:http://www.ubcd4win.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[SteelTrepid]

This is starting to sound like the quest for the holy grail.  (IMG:http://www.ubcd4win.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

That's why I felt we need to create a team to do it. We need 6-15 people to work together and find out as much as possible about this. Many others have sites or posts in forums that give us some information. A more controlled "team" test bed should provide a lot of valuable information. More users will also bring more issues that can possibly come up, this will provide more testing on many different hardware devices (mobo's & USB devices). Then if (and hopefully when) we figure out a method or two for accomplishing this, it will be public. Hundreds and maybe thousands of people can then try it. With the "USB team" working on this for several weeks together we should be able to answer almost any question thrown at us about it and troubleshoot almost any issue reported by a user. I really want this well documented and detailed.

Now we just need a team.

Current team count: 4

[JamesIEvans]

Thanks for the helpful links  (IMG:http://www.ubcd4win.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I actually came across the "EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT BOOTING FROM AN USB PENDRIVE ... AND DARED TO ASK" guide last night and read it, it was helpful indeed.

Over in the 911 forum, there is some discussion about this program,

FlashBoot

which seems to be succesful. The program is not free. It costs about $26 US.

[dirkgently42]

Wow... looks good! (IMG:http://www.ubcd4win.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[stidyup]

Hopefully this issue can get fixed. Unfortunately I haven't got a large enough usb device to join in the fun (IMG:http://www.ubcd4win.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/sad.gif) But this will be awesome if the ubcd4win can boot off a usb device.