newer machines should be able to boot directly to USB hdd just fine... just never have had a drive that really worked with that. On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 9:24 AM, Steve Holmes wrote: > That's rather annoying when some drive manufacturer forces us to leave > their junk on the drive when we wish to do otherwise with it. > Actually, my drive came out of an old laptop and I stuck it inside a > portable drive enclosure so I would think we should be able to boot > with it.  I used grub to make this disk bootable or at least attempt > to do so. > > I might have to do a grub-install to the /dev/sda MBR but I hesitate > to do so at the moment. > > On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 07:25:08AM -0700, Stephen wrote: >> I have an external drive that has the same issue. in my case there is >> a small "firmware" that resides on the USB-PATA bridge that has about >> 3-400 MB of stuff on it and mounts as a CD. this definitely fouled all >> my attempts at booting to the device. >> >> On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 3:23 AM, Steve Holmes wrote: >> > I got a new machine which (of course) has Windows pre-installed and >> > I'm not ready to dump it entirely just yet so in the meantime, I built >> > out a complete Arch Linux 64-bit system on a portable USB external >> > drive.  I also used or tried to use grub to set it up to boot.  During >> > the original settup session, it appeared to do all this OK but I can't >> > get the laptop to recognize or boot from this device.  I did not >> > modify the master boot record on my laptop; instead, I figured on >> > using the boot menu on the laptop to choose the USB drive; this method >> > works beautifully with an ISO image I burned to a small thumbdrive but >> > I cannot do the same with my larger USB portable drive on which I >> > installed Arch Linux.  Do I have to do anything else to make this >> > thing bootable? >> > --------------------------------------------------- >> > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us >> > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: >> > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss >> > >> >> >> >> -- >> A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from >> rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button. >> >> Stephen >> --------------------------------------------------- >> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us >> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: >> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > -- A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button. Stephen --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss