USB flash drive does not show up in BIOS
 

Just received my new Linux Mint 19.1 Cinnamon- 16GB USB flash drive(32-bit). Plugged it in and it does not show up in BIOS. I have tried all USB ports, Disabled/Enabled Secure Boot, Enabled/Disabled Fast Boot. Downloading earlier version of Linux to make a bootable USB has been time consuming and tedious. I eventually succeeded but prefer not to go thru that again. I hoped buying a pre-installed Linux USB would spare me so much time and effort. I am trying to install Linux 19.1 onto a 1T external SSD hard drive and then replacing my old sputtering HDD hard drive(Linux Mint 18.3) with the new SSD.

I'm pretty sure the BIOS will not actually see a specific usb stick. You have to boot into the bios and change the boot order to usb from hdd. Then when you boot you will have the option to boot a bootable usb stick.

I agree with petelq.

You need to configure the BIOS on your motherboard to see your new USB.

Can you please tell us what hardware (computer) you are using?

I suspect you need 64-bit since you mentioned secure boot. Maybe it will boot if you can disable secure boot and enable legacy/cms mode.

Usually shows up as a hard drive choice. However we don't know if the drive is actually working.

Just found out on my new Dell that some (maybe all? Mine, at least) UEFI computers don't show the USB drive if the drive is legacy* bootable and the computer is't set up to boot in legacy mode.

Edit: So maybe an option is to change the "BIOS" settings to legacy mode? This may mean repartitioning the SSD as well.

*Don't know what the difference is, haven't had time to look into it yet - absence/presence of an EFI partition maybe?

asus gaming laptop
intel core i7-6700HQ cpu 2.60ghz x4
memory- 15.6 GB
HD- 944.9 GB
Graphics Card- Nvidia corp device 1b1

I thought a linux installed usb flash drive would be as easy as plug and install. No such luck.

Not sure why you would want a 32bit but that's your choice. If the usb doesn't show up as a drive either under usb or hard drives in the BIOS, have you tested it on another computer to see if it is recognized?

I would first install the USB HDD in the PC, then I would use a 64 bit image, set the BIOS to use UEFI/Secure Boot and disable fast boot. You will save many headaches later and it's more likely to work this way.