MBR on pen drive?

shmude · 09-18-2003, 04:38 PM

I just got a USB pen drive that is USB 2.0 and 256MB. I am trying to get a version on linux to install onto the drive and have it bootable. The problem is that there is no MBR on my pen drive. My question to everybody is how do i get an MBR on the drive?

frogman · 09-18-2003, 06:17 PM

You could try creating a small (no more than a few megs) dos partition on the drive. (if you were installing a bootloader, which I suppose you're not, it would be easy).

My usb drive comes up as scsi if I'm installing (on a main system) with it plugged in, I can load a minmal version of slack / mandrake to it and boot from it as if it were a normal drive. your mileage / BIOS may vary.

I've never installed X though (64mb drive).

shmude · 09-18-2003, 08:18 PM

Ok, i got an MBR on the drive but im trying to use syslinux to get a boot loader up and going on it. When i run 'syslinux -s J:' under windows XP it gives an error message

D:\syslinux>syslinux -s J:
ERROR 3246: Boot sector read failed

but if i include a .exe after the syslinux it doesn't have a problem and seems to run correctly, but i dont get anything on the pen drive except this file

http://www.holyassassins.com/backup/ldlinux.sys

what am i doing wrong?

this is the site that i was going off of

http://www.localareasecurity.com/mod...artid=6&page=1

is there a better way to do this?

shmude · 09-18-2003, 11:32 PM

I dont think my drive has a valid MBR or syslinux would work. I can get syslinux to work with a floppy but it gives me the error when i try the Pen Drive. I need help getting a working MBR on my drive, it can be from linux or windows, i have access to both.