Hello all, this is just a general question I've been looking for an answer to for a long time. Normally I just lurk the Linux forum, but I figure I'll pick your brains with this one...
I have two flash drives, a 4GB Kingston DataTraveler and a 16GB SanDisk Cruzer. When plugged in to any computer running any operating system they both work wonderfully, mounting properly and storing data. I work as a sysadmin for a professor here at my school, and occasionally I need to boot linux from a live USB to fix a broken/failing computer. I generally use Unetbootin to create it, but I've used other methods. I've tried to boot from both drives and only the 16GB drive works... most of the time. A few computers including my primary laptop, an Acer Aspire 5920G, will boot from both of them. My netbook, an Acer Aspire One D150, will not, and it's newer than my laptop. Most of the computers here at work are very old, anywhere from 1-10+years (some of these beasts are running Fedora Core 1). None of them will boot from the 4GB, but all work with the 16GB.
Does anyone know why? The only thing I can think of is the U3 partition on the 16GB that fools computers into thinking it's a CD (or something like that). Still, why would a computer be much more likely to boot from a live CD than a live USB? If it's a driver problem, wouldn't Unetbootin take care of that? All of these computers have the ability in BIOS, and I've set the boot order to boot from USB Device, but they either skip it completely or just kinda hang at bootup. I could understand why both work or why both don't work, but why one and not the other?
The main reason I finally decided to post is because I left my 16GB at my parents house when I visited last weekend, and only have the 4GB. I have 5 busted computers here and no CDs!
I have two flash drives, a 4GB Kingston DataTraveler and a 16GB SanDisk Cruzer. When plugged in to any computer running any operating system they both work wonderfully, mounting properly and storing data. I work as a sysadmin for a professor here at my school, and occasionally I need to boot linux from a live USB to fix a broken/failing computer. I generally use Unetbootin to create it, but I've used other methods. I've tried to boot from both drives and only the 16GB drive works... most of the time. A few computers including my primary laptop, an Acer Aspire 5920G, will boot from both of them. My netbook, an Acer Aspire One D150, will not, and it's newer than my laptop. Most of the computers here at work are very old, anywhere from 1-10+years (some of these beasts are running Fedora Core 1). None of them will boot from the 4GB, but all work with the 16GB.
Does anyone know why? The only thing I can think of is the U3 partition on the 16GB that fools computers into thinking it's a CD (or something like that). Still, why would a computer be much more likely to boot from a live CD than a live USB? If it's a driver problem, wouldn't Unetbootin take care of that? All of these computers have the ability in BIOS, and I've set the boot order to boot from USB Device, but they either skip it completely or just kinda hang at bootup. I could understand why both work or why both don't work, but why one and not the other?
The main reason I finally decided to post is because I left my 16GB at my parents house when I visited last weekend, and only have the 4GB. I have 5 busted computers here and no CDs!