Dual Boot USB

[TekSolutions]

In the past I have created several USB Thumb drives with Ubuntu and Hirens Boot CD using the directions from this link

http://www.0-fx.com/index.php?/Gene...ash-drive-with-ubuntu-and-hirens-bootcd.html)

What I want to be able to do know is to dual boot Ubuntu 32 and 64 bit as well as Hirens Boot CD.

Any body have any suggestions?

 

[vacunita]

Unless the Pc in question has a very granular boot selector at the Bios level the answer is you can't. By default normal boot sequences look for the first available boot device to boot from following the boot order set in Bios.

So if you have more than one bootable USB drive it will boot from the first one it finds, unless the bios has an option at boot time to select boot drive with in boot drive type.





----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Web & Tech

 

[TekSolutions]

I realize that not all computers (computers older then 3 or 4 years old or so) would be capable of booting of off a USB device. But now a days most if not all newer computers will be able to do.

 

[ChrisHirst]

I realize that not all computers (computers older then 3 or 4 years old or so)

You can go back further than that for USB bootable motherboards, I've just installed Linux Mint from a pen/flash drive on two machines that were originally purchased circa 2003.

Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Time flies like an arrow, however, fruit flies like a banana.
Webmaster Forum

 

[vacunita]

Never said you couldn't boot off USB, I just said the bios has to be granular enough to offer the option to boot from more than one device of the same type.

I'll say it again, most motherboards will boot off the first device of a certain type they find if there is more than one attached. I've seen some Bios that do offer a sub menu for device types to boot from so you can choose which to use. But as far as I know it's not very common.

However your best bet may be to get grub to pickup the additional USB devices to boot from.

----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Web & Tech

 

[ChrisHirst]

Sorry Phil, that is what I was trying to post, the "granular" BIOS is probably more common than you may think.
My 'workhorse' which is a ~six year old Gigabyte board allows me to choose a connected USB device and one of the 'lab-rats', a 'Tiny Computers' machine in a former life does, with an Award BIOS dated 2001.

Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Time flies like an arrow, however, fruit flies like a banana.
Webmaster Forum

 

[vacunita]

It seems I'm not being clear enough. Again Yes you can choose to boot with a USB device I am not debating that.

What happens when you are have more than one USB drive i.e. 2 or 3 USB drives plugged in (all bootable) to either machine and you want to choose which one to boot from can your BIOS'es do that? Or do they boot from the first one they find?

If they allow you to choose form which USB drive to boot from as you have more than one then I stand by my original answer:

You can do it if the BIOS allows it, which means check you BIOS to see if you can select from between more than one USB device when booting.


----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Web & Tech

 

[ChrisHirst]

What happens when you are have more than one USB drive i.e. 2 or 3 USB drives plugged in (all bootable) to either machine and you want to choose which one to boot from can your BIOS'es do that? Or do they boot from the first one they find?

No, I can set a order for the USB devices in exactly the same way I can set the order of the real HDs or CD/DVD drives.

The BIOS shows the name of each device plugged in and if none of them are plugged in at power up it will drop through to find the first bootable drive in the machine.

Kept me amused/amazed for ages playing about with different operating systems on different drives AND not only that, I can hit a function key when the machine is booting up to choose which drive to start from should I so wish to.

Gigabyte certainly know how to keep the geeks amused

Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Time flies like an arrow, however, fruit flies like a banana.
Webmaster Forum

 

[TekSolutions]

I did not intend to have multiple USB drives to boot from. What I intended was to have one USB, partitioned if necessary to dual boot from.

What I am looking for is to have a USB drive that I can either boot too Unbuntu 32 or 64 bit, which ever the system will support so that I can perform certain tasks such as restore the windows registry (manually) for instance. I would also have Hirens Boot CD available to test memory, hard drives etc.

 

[flyboytim]

Pendrivelinux multiboot USB creators e.g.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/

Will boot syslinux from the USB drive and allow you to build a grub menu to either boot from bootable iso images saved on the disk or actual installations (Hirens, Linux, Windows PE, Windows install disk images, and even exotic OSes like KolibriOS or Menuet) on the USB in defined folders - limited only by the capacity of the USB drive.