Booting from a USB

[Maker]

Thought it best to start a new thread.

Do you actually need windows? I only ask as you may find something like Linux Mint much better suited. I have dual boot on this machine for Adobe Creative suite only. It'll fly on a T400 and feel like a new machine again.

I've just downloaded the LinuxMint Cinnamon ISO, put it on a USB stick using UUI, put it in my tired old Acer Aspire One, pressed F12 on startup and only got the options to boot from the internal HDD or from a network, there was no USB option as the internet led me to believe there would be.

Does anyone more clued up on this sort of thing know where I could have gone wrong and what I can do? I'll see if it works on my new(ish) Lenovo in a minute to determine if the fault is with the laptop or the USB

Is it reasonable to expect the laptop, which is abysmally slow on Win.10 to be any better on Linux Mint?

 

[the snooper]

You have to change the option in the bios
Will the iso work from a USB stick, iso usually write to disc

 

[pedrobedro]

Did you make the USB stick bootable?

 

[Shedendman]

http://linoxide.com/linux-how-to/install-linux-mint-18-usb-flash/
pretty easy if you read it through
your lappy will fly far better than it did with win10

 

[pedrobedro]

I run an old Advent laptop on Mint. It works well. It just updated to mint 18.

 

[the snooper]

Did you make the USB stick bootable?

If the bios is set to boot from the HD first then the optical drive which they usually are it won't entertain the USB as it will find a boot able drive straight away and so stop looking

 

[Kayos]

I've an oldish laptop to put Linux on but no usb boot option, need to buy some blank DVDs

 

[Wendelspanswick]

Thought it best to start a new thread.



I've just downloaded the LinuxMint Cinnamon ISO, put it on a USB stick using UUI, put it in my tired old Acer Aspire One, pressed F12 on startup and only got the options to boot from the internal HDD or from a network, there was no USB option as the internet led me to believe there would be.

Does anyone more clued up on this sort of thing know where I could have gone wrong and what I can do? I'll see if it works on my new(ish) Lenovo in a minute to determine if the fault is with the laptop or the USB

Is it reasonable to expect the laptop, which is abysmally slow on Win.10 to be any better on Linux Mint?

I recently went through the pain of this, we bought a stack of mini PC's that came preloaded with Windows 10 HOME and I had to upgrade them to Windows 10 Pro with a fresh install. I spent hours trying to get these PC's to see the USB sticks, I tried about 5 different USB sticks (SanDisk, Kingston, generic etc.) with images made with Windows Image Software and Rufus but with no joy.
Out of desperation I plugged in a really ancient 256MB USB stick (too small for my image) and it appeared in the bootable devices list, I did some more research and it seems that the majority of USB sticks are built on the SanDisk model which PC's see as another hard drive, what I needed was a USB stick built on the old model of a removable drive, I ordered a genuine Toshiba USB stick (about £4 on ebay), created the image with Rufus and it was seen straight away by the PC's.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/351880153052

 

[Wendelspanswick]

Struggling to edit my posts so here is a link to Rufus ISO, image creating software.
https://rufus.akeo.ie/

 

[the snooper]

I recently went through the pain of this, we bought a stack of mini PC's that came preloaded with Windows 10 HOME and I had to upgrade them to Windows 10 Pro with a fresh install. I spent hours trying to get these PC's to see the USB sticks, I tried about 5 different USB sticks (SanDisk, Kingston, generic etc.) with images made with Windows Image Software and Rufus but with no joy.
Out of desperation I plugged in a really ancient 256MB USB stick (too small for my image) and it appeared in the bootable devices list, I did some more research and it seems that the majority of USB sticks are built on the SanDisk model which PC's see as another hard drive, what I needed was a USB stick built on the old model of a removable drive, I ordered a genuine Toshiba USB stick (about £4 on ebay), created the image with Rufus and it was seen straight away by the PC's.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/351880153052

Couldn't you have simply used the disk management to format the SanDisk and then make it bootable

 

[Maker]

You have to change the option in the bios
Will the iso work from a USB stick, iso usually write to disc

I've changed it to boot from a USB first if one is present, but it just does Windows.

Did you make the USB stick bootable?

I'm not sure what that means.

The laptop doesn't have an optical drive, I have an external one but I don't think that'll work for this, I could be wrong though.

I tried changing it to MBR (Not sure what that means but UUI said it's needed) and it said the disk is not convertible.

I'll download Rufus and see how that goes.

 

[pedrobedro]

I've changed it to boot from a USB first if one is present, but it just does Windows.

I'm not sure what that means.
I'll download Rufus and see how that goes.

The Rufus option looks like a good one I would definitely use. I used Microsoft's option as it was the only one I knew about previously. Here's a page that looks like it might help you.

 

[gaz1]

ive tried a few usb tools for booting and rufus dosnt always work

formating it right and make it bootable is a toshiba hp usb format tool

for the older machines i got round this by using another tool so would boot from usb as it gives the option via a disk insert then you can install via a usb stick

 

[normspanners]

Out of desperation I plugged in a really ancient 256MB USB stick (too small for my image) and it appeared in the bootable devices list, I did some more research and it seems that the majority of USB sticks are built on the SanDisk model which PC's see as another hard drive, what I needed was a USB stick built on the old model of a removable drive, I ordered a genuine Toshiba USB stick (about £4 on ebay), created the image with Rufus and it was seen straight away by the PC's.

I am running win 10 from a san disc ultrafit usb3.0 flashdrive 64gb it sticks out from the front about 5mm and is running on ONLY that !

its on the machine I am typing this on, it is running on usb 2 and is nearly as fast as anything else Its a lenovo small form factor compact desk top is TOTALLY silent, win 10 and a few programs take up about 13 gb so have about 46gb free, mrs uses it for her avon stuff etc I built it as a second machine for running as a print server so is on 24/7 and watching u tube vids for guitar practice etc.
as far as I can tell, up to now its totally reliable it is better than any tablet for what I want.

 

[Wendelspanswick]

Couldn't you have simply used the disk management to format the SanDisk and then make it bootable

I spent about 2 days on this while I was manning the helpdesk, tried all the format options but none of these mini PC'S would boot from a SanDisk no matter how it was formatted or the image created.
I even tried creating a DD image ( not advisable as you cannot guarantee that you can reuse the USB stick afterwards) and these mini PC's still refused to see it as a bootable image.

 

[the snooper]

I spent about 2 days on this while I was manning the helpdesk, tried all the format options but none of these mini PC'S would boot from a SanDisk no matter how it was formatted or the image created.
I even tried creating a DD image ( not advisable as you cannot guarantee that you can reuse the USB stick afterwards) and these mini PC's still refused to see it as a bootable image.

strange

 

[normspanners]

I used win-to-usb for mine but I then tried installing a stand alone, usb3 pci card on the mobo to try the san disc in to see if it would boot from that to utilise the usb 3 extra X15 speed but it wont boot, even though its set in the bios to boot from pci etc etc.
but I am happy with it on usb2 boot time is about 1min so pretty swift as is.
people say the stick on usb3 get very hot when worked hard but this seems fine, for what I am doing with it .

 

[gaz1]

on some machines ive had to use a bootable iso cd image then via its settings then go through the usb side of it

via this program has given access to other things

PLoP Boot Manager

but make sure the usb stick is in the machine when booted otherwise it dosnt show

ive found this method works when many systems dont have the option of usb boot

however booting through this way you then get the option to boot from usb or able to access the bootable iso image on the usb stick or hard drive

 

[bump]

You need to have the USB stick installed and then change the boot settings to use the USB disk. The Acer Aspire sees it as a USB HDD rather than a removable USB device.

 

[Maker]

I downloaded Rufus, followed the instructions, plugged it into the laptop and it still didn't detect it. Then I did it again so I could take a picture of the BIOS menu to ask if I'd done it right and this time it decided to work. The crappy old Acer was no faster though.