Does Windows 8 certification nuke USB for bootable Linux?
 

I recently ran into problems with my USB project. I wanted to find a USB flash device so I could make an easily portable and bootable USB Linux OS.

I bought, and eventually returned, several brands and varieties within a brand.

At boot time:

My bios only recognized 1 usb flash device (San Disk Glider 16 gb) but only recognized it as a fixed drive (i.e., it appeared under hard drives not removable drives). That is what I now use though it is not very convienent since it acts as a fixed instead of removable item.

After boot time (i.e., into Windows):

My computer recognized all USB devices and they worked fine for data storage but obviously not booting.

I researched the issue and learned many USB manufacturers changed things to meet Windows 8 certification.

Does this mean all USB flash devices will act like this: either behave as fixed disk at boot or not at all be detected at boot?

Are there any USB flash devices that still behave like removable, bootable devices?

As far as I am aware all current BIOS and the replacement UEFI tend to list USB drives as hard disk drives -- this isn't anything to do with the USB device. As for being able to boot from them: to do so you would need an image to boot from that Secure Boot recognises as signed and valid -- thankfully not something I have come across yet so I'm afraid the only help I can give you is to suggest you google how to boot Linus from USB with Secure Boot as I'm sure others have tried and, hopefully, succeeded.

Can't you hit F12 or something during boot to get access to a boot list; USB, CDROM, etc, where you should be able to select a bootable USB device. Nope! I don't know much about UEFI boot firmware either. :(

Play Bonny!

:hattip:

Having had this issue with a colleagues laptop I can say with certainty that this won't work. What 273 said about Secure Boot is pretty much it. Unless you can trick the motherboard into recognising a hard drive as been signed for it, you're not going to be able to boot from that hard drive. I have no idea what the plan would be if a hard drive fails as it seems there is no generic way to recover from that situation in Windows 8. (short of buying a new PC)

I would expect Windows 8 will allow a bootable recovary disk to be made but I haven't looked into it.
The PC should also allow you to disable Secure Boot if it is Windows 8 certified.

If I'm not mistaken, an EfI partition will have to be created on the usb with the efi boot files for the linux distro installed in order to boot, if the computer is in efi mode.

That is partly true, but some, if not all, Windows 8 machines require the operating system to initialise the usb ports. This is done to save boot-up time.

On these machines, not even a usb hid keyboard or mouse will work until the operating system is loaded.

It might be possible to gerry-rig a 'boot-strap cd' to boot up a usb. But it would probably be easier to just boot a live cd in the first place. (though it would either need to be signed or you would need to disable efi)

The computer / motherboard in question is nearly 5 years old. I don't recall having this problem in the past.

So, does this mean that from now on, any USB I buy will be recognized as a fixed disk?

Thank you for all the replies.

Unfortunately, I can't press F12 or any other such key. The only time I can access (or change) the boot order is to actually go into BIOS during boot.

Yes, as far as I canm tell all modern BIOS and UEFI systems will show a USB drive as a "fixed disk".
To boot from USB going into BIOS is excatly what you should do -- as has been the norm for the past 15 years or so.

Most modern computers show boot options with f8 key. As far as signed certified distro's fedora & ubuntu are 2 of them that come to mind & should also boot in efi-mode. Try googling starting usb/cd in usb mode. It maybe a kernel parameter.

OK - so now I know that this is unavoidable. Now, the 2nd part: why would my BIOS, in its listing of bootable devices, only show 1 of the multiple USB devices I tried?

In other words, I tested several different USB flash devices. All stored data during regular computer operation but only 1 was actually "bootable". Needless to say, that " bootable" 1 is the 1 I referenced earlier. It appears as a fixed disk in BIOS. The USB flash devices don't even appear in BIOS.

Are you not seeing the usb as a regular "Fixed Hdd"? If you are seeing it as a hdd then select it for boot.

Were the other flash drives larger than 16Gb? If so, that might be the problem. Some computers have trouble booting flash drives that have a large amount of storage on them.

The only USB flash I see in BIOS is one that is listed under "hard drives" instead of "USB devices". That is the one I use. It is 16 GB.

The other USB flash devices I tried were either 8 GB or 16 GB. BIOS did not even show them when I checked BIOS. However, after booting into my OS (Win7), I could see and use them. Thus, it appears these other USB flash devices can store data but not boot.

On the other hand, the 1 USB flash that BIOS did recognize can both store data and boot.

So strange. Why would one both store data and boot while the others would only store data?

How was the two that don't work formated?

Can you please tell us how you solved the problem so as to benefit others who have the same problem.

Very good question. Are large capacity hard drives coming formatted as ExFAT nowadays, perhaps?

Oh sorry, I marked it solved because it looks like a dead end. I can still use the San Disk Glider 16 GB USB flash but will just have to accept that it is recognized as a fixed device.

The other USB flash drives I tried, which BIOS did not display, were formated in either ext2 or 4. I can't remember which. They were originally fat16 or fat32.

The formating matters. If you know of USB drives which will not boot or be recognised please share!

Ok now we're getting somewhere.
Usually the drives are fat not ext2.
What bootable image did you put on drive & how?

For most modern linux and systems a USB is a real physical hard drive. It will not show up as a usb choice. It will show up as a internal hard drive choice.

Only older usb flash might register as usb types. Usually ones below 2G. HP has tools that can help make some bootable. Syslinux sometimes fixes some. Not all usb flash can be made to boot. Almost or maybe even all newer usb flash can be made to boot easily.

Older linux didn't use the scsi (taken from I believe Iomega zip) to access hard drives and won't usually be able to boot to usb of any kind unless updated.

It has been a week or two since I had them (I returned them for a refund). San Disk 8 and 16 GB USB flash. I don't remember the specific names. The one that worked was "glider". The ones which did not work were the "non-glider" ones. I also tried one or two other brands but can't remember the names, though they were also 8 or 16 GB. I did not try PNY because I heard bad things about it. Sorry I can't provide further details. I just don't remember.

So what OS did you try to put on drive & how did you do it.

I used pclos from a live CD. I simply selected "install" and finished the install process. It appeared to install fine on each USB flash but as I mentioned d earlier, only one USB (San Disk Glider 16 GB) booted. None of the others booted even though I performed the same task on them.

Very odd.

I don't think anyone mentioned the bootable flag, yet. One thing to check is that the 'Bootable' flag is set on the bootable partition on each usb drive using the fdisk command. Perhaps you didn't set a bootable flag? That might keep the drive from being listed in a BIOS or the EFI.

By-the-way, I have never gotten a Lexar usb to boot on any computer, but Sandisk and Kingston brands have usually booted. Various USB drives are not bootable or require unique tools to prepare for booting.

Also, don't use USB drives to share data. They are a potential source of viruses or root-kit infection.

Windows 8 certainly is a PITA as far as usb boot options go. I have a san disk Cruzer 8GB and a Kingston Technology 32GB.My Samsung NE350 wants UEFI compliant. Which means, I would have to have a working install of windows 8, complete with sda3 which has all the uefi codes.

I found that very funny.

Lexar! Yes, that was one of the brands that failed for me. I knee it began with the letter "L" but couldn't remember the name.