Boot from external floppy drive
 

Hi,

I use a notebook with a USB external floppy (I can switch the CD with the supplied floppy drive). I never really used the internal floppy as I would like to keep the CD in all the time.

I would like to be able to boot from the USB floppy (which shows as E:\ drive when it is connected).

But every time I select the floppy as a boot device from the start up boot menu - it bypasses the floppy after a period of time and go to HDD to boot from.

Is there a way to do that ? as I need to create a boot floppy for now (not on the MBR section) to test the LILO and be able to boot Windows as default, and I can't use both the CD and floppy at the same time.

I hope I didn't confuse you too.

Thanks

Maybe you didn't create the bootdisk correctly? Or does it just skip the floppy drive when booting?
And do you know if your BIOS supports booting from external USB hardware?

Garry :D

No, I doesn't check the floppy (no read signal). I checked the bios and the floppy is grayed out as if it doesn't recognize the USB external floppy drive. May be it is looking for the internal one.

But as I said I need both at the same time - if it is possible of course.

I think you'll find that, if not all, certainly the vast majority of BIOS manufacturers, do no support booting from USB devices simply because there are so many of them, and the can all be slightly different.

I would suggest that, if you really need to have the CD drive in instead of the 'internal' floppy, then you create a bootable CD.

How can I do that?

Would someone let me know how to create a bootable CD please.

Thanks

It all depends on what you need it for. If you have a bootable Linux installation CD, you can (almost always) use it to boot your already-installed Linux. Boot from the CD, press F1 (usually) to get to a text lilo prompt, then type linux root=/dev/hdXX where hdxx is the root partition of your already installed Linux distro.

I needed initially to boot from a floppy if I need to boot to LUNIX, and keep the default boot to Windows ME – just to be safe. But I have problem booting up from an External Floppy drive, so the only way now to a bootable CD to do that.

I don't know much about LILO, and I would rather to be safe than sorry.

OK, you're actually pretty safe with Lilo. You can set it up to boot Windows by default, and even have the LINUX (note the order of the vowels :D) entry password protected. Alternatively, and I must stress that I don't know if this will work... does your CD support booting from CDRW (re-writable CDs)? If so, try booting to Linux and making an image of your bootable floppy, and then burning that to CD... so effectively, your CD would be identical to your boot floppy. As I said, and I must stress again, I don't know if this would work - hence the use of CDRW.

Alternatively, and you might find this to be much more to your liking... there is a program called LOADLIN that runs from Dos (or Windows). It allows you to load up your installed Linux without the need to install any bootloaders. You could make an entry for it in your Windows boot menu, or just have a file loadlinux.bat in C:\ and use it to boot to Linux. That way, you won't need to fiddle about with bootloaders, and such.

HTH

Thanks a lot for your help. The LoadLin is much better now for me than LILO.

I'll use it for now to get the LINUX up quickly without any risk. I'll keep on reading about the LILO before using it.

Thanks again for the help.

There was the question about a bootable CD. I have a project on my web site "Roll your own Linux Boot cd", gives you a simple way to create your own custom bootable CD:

http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/~purschke/RescueCD/

there are also links to other similar projects, especially Timo Benk's (http://rescuecd.sourceforge.net/). They all have a somehat different application and purpose.

Hope it helps,
mlp