[Jayce]

Is it possible?

I ran into a situation last night where XP wouldn't boot past the splash screen. It wasn't a boot loader problem at all. I couldn't get into the recovery console or ANYTHING. Somehow I managed to boot to command prompt from the XP CD and was able to to a chkdsk, fixmbr, etc. Nothing worked.

The fix? I took the computer to my house, took the HDD out, put it in my computer, booted up and extracted their files off (docs, pics, music, etc). Then, did a fresh format. Now... all is well.

But had I had a bootable copy of XP and Ubuntu (for whatever I need) handy on a flash drive I could have done everything last night, since they only had about 3gb worth of data.

I know individually this is possible. But I'm questioning if dual booting off of a flash drive is something that is an option.

Thoughts?

[Mak213]

Duall Booting off of a flash drive is impossible. IT is hard enough for PC's to boot from a flash drive as it is. Cause each time you insert the flash drive it gets a new Drive letter. OR a new ID number or something that messes with the bootlaoders.

That is hard enough itself to accomplish let alone trying to get both XP AND Ubuntu on the same flash drive and being able to choose which one to boot.

Indivually there are guides all over the net. Together, not a chance.

This is just a boot thing as XP will be able to be bootable and work but not installed. That is something totally different booting from and using the XP rather than having the XP installer media on the Flash Drive.

[Jayce]

Blah. That sucks.

Question, though. When you put an OS on a flash drive, is it typically recommended that you don't use that drive for anything else? Like... should I dedicate my spare flash drive entirely for the OS? Or can it still boot the OS from a flash drive even if I have a bunch of documents and stuff backed up on the same drive?

[Mak213]

I would just use it as a dedicated OS Flash Drive. Who knows what could happen if you get a document on there that is infected. Being a a flash drive there will be no protection. IF it gets infected your only option would be to redo it.

[Jayce]

Yeah, I understand. The purpose of this is simply a last resort troubleshooting method with nonbooting drives, giving me the ability to boot on my own OS and be able to copy the files off.

[Mak213]

But this is solely dependant on the machine. Not all machines can boot from a USB Thumb Drive. In those cases even this would be a lost cause. Cause you wouldnt be able to use your USB Thumb Drive. Even some of the newer systems still have trouble booting from a USB Drive. I know several people that have this issue cause they installed a Linux Distro on a External drive.

Everytime they boot the MBR gets messed up cause the External device gets a new designation and cant boot. They have to go in manually and fix it everytime they want to boot to it.

You would just be better off having a Windows PE or LiveCD. Might be more to carry around but it is a much safer solution. Rather than trying to figure out if the system you are working on can even boot from USB and then trying to get it to boot from USB.

[Jayce]

I have a Linux livecd as well as super-grub on CD. Yesterday, even these cases didn't help me. What helped me was taking the HDD out of the computer, putting it in mine, booting to my own Windows XP partition and exploring the problematic drive.

Had I had an OS on a flash drive last night, I wouldn't have had to go through all of that trouble. See what I mean? Flash drive OS or my own OS on my personal computer... it's the same deal each way around.

And in the case of last night, it had the ability to boot to a USB device.

[Mak213]

That is fine. But that wont always be the case. I am just letting you know that. Plus even if it was teh case you dont know for sure that it would have boot cause you dont know if the boot record would have been the same as when you set it up on your PC.

REmember each drive and everything puts the bootloader differently. In my case having 3 internal hard drives and a external would cause my bootloader to read the USB thumb drive as the 5th device. Which would not be the case on every PC it got plugged into.

I am just trying to show you how using a USB Thumb Drive can be very difficult. I have experimented with it in the past with my PC's. It is very difficult to get working flawlessly everytime you boot.

I am just trying to let you know of this stuff so you dont ahve to find it out the hard way like i did. That is all.

[Jayce]

Ah, no... that makes sense... and in my case of having 3 drives in my computer, I can see it being an issue...

Ah well, it was a fun idea to tinker with.

[CalcProgrammer1]

You can partition USB drives and flash memory, so actually having two OS'es on a thumb drive wouldn't be too hard. Getting it to boot properly would be the biggest issue. I'd think you'd be able to do it, just getting GRUB configured on a flash drive is probably pretty hard.