usb to ide adapter? booting off usb drive?

FireRaven · 09-29-2010, 07:26 PM

Hi, this is a strange question, but I have a blank USB stick (sdc).

I want to just go:
#dd if=debian-506-i386-DVD-1.iso of=/dev/sdc

Of course this won't boot because of the DVD filesystem, but there must be some "adapter" that you can plug in between (off ebay or DX) that lets a raw usb stick run like a dvd/cd does.

Ether emulating your USB stick as a IDE/SATA DVD-ROM or external USB DVD-ROM?

GrapefruiTgirl · 09-29-2010, 07:29 PM

You don't need an "adapter" if I understand you right. You might find this interesting:
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

Does that help?

FireRaven · 09-29-2010, 07:57 PM

That needs a GUI and I'm doing this off Debian Live commandline only.

Also would be nice if it worked for other distros too or windows with this method.

jefro · 09-29-2010, 08:11 PM

You need an image. Some distros offer a multi use image such as from the Haiku-OS group. One image suites all. I think I have seen some linux like that but mostly they offer an image in the iso format.

what you might look at is grub4dos or grub4nt. It allows some distro's to be booted in native iso images. See pendrivelinux.com

I guess it also would be possible to present the usb device as a cd/dvd rom too but mostly people either select from choices like usb-zip or usb-hd or usb-cdrom.