LiveUSB issues

[Dan]

Actually, I've got three problems here tonight, but only one of them really needs a solution.

The first problem is a 160G SATA laptop drive which is suddenly tossing bad sectors. The solution to that is underway now. I'm moving all the data off of it, and preparing to consign it unto the parts drawer. This was originally the data drive from the infamous "Fukushima Special" HP dv9904. So it was storage. Not a big deal, just fetch a new one. The cost difference between a 160g and a 500g is negligible, so an upgrade is in order.

The second problem is a software problem which seems to haunt all of my jump drives, save one. That being an old 256mb PNY. It currently holds a Linux Rescue system which both boots and works beautifully in all but one ancient laptop which does not have the BIOS capability of booting from a jump drive. All of the rest of them, (above 4gb capacity) -- an assortment of Toshiba, Kingston and PNY jump drives -- appear to be incapable of containing a functional LiveUSB system of either F14, F15 or F16. Attempting to install through LiveUSB tools fails miserably when attempting to use any persistence room at all, and even though a straight liveUSB install reports as good, it refuse to boot. All I get is a "missing operating system" message from the BIOS.

The third problem, related to the first, is the fact that two weeks of seriously attempting to burn down the HP dv9904ca "Fukushima Special" by hard to normal use (on factory installed Vista, which runs a lot hotter than fedora), has failed miserably. Therefore, methinks I'm going to install F16 on it and see what happens there. Provided it survives the data transfers working on it now via the F16 Beta LiveCD.

Man! It's hard to keep things perfect!

Anyone have any ideas on the jump drives/LiveUSB issues?

[cazo]

I use a few Toshiba 4GB drives for LiveUSB systems that work fine for me. I didn't have to do anything to them beforehand, and only used livecd-iso-to-disk to make them into a LiveUSB.

I don't know if it will help any, but the output of fdisk -lu /dev/sdb (with one of them plugged in) looks like:

Disk /dev/sdb: 4029 MB, 4029677568 bytes
233 heads, 30 sectors/track, 1125 cylinders, total 7870464 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00089851

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *          34     7870430     3935198+   6  FAT16

I've used the same drives for F9 thru F15.

[ryptyde]

You can try starting liveusb-creator from a terminal with

liveusb-creator --reset-mbr

and see if that helps with any of the flash drives. It has worked for me on several ocassions on various hp, lexar, pny etc drives.

phil

[AndrewSerk]

Hello Dan,
I gave up on live-usb creator as one week it works and one it doesn't. If ryptyde's solution doesn't work for ya you could give this a try:

insert the usb drive
open palimpsest and select then unmount the usb drive
select usb and click format drive, from the pop up window, pull down menu, select don't partition and click format
close palimpsest
From this point I use dd with a command like:

# dd if=/home/user/place/xxx.iso of=/dev/sdx

This method works for me every time.