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Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: Chunce DeLeone on March 17, 2009, 11:48:17 am

Title: Can you boot to a Flash Drive
Post by: Chunce DeLeone on March 17, 2009, 11:48:17 am
Lookign to build a Juke and I am trying to get the weight down by not booting to a harddrive and using a flash drive instead.  I am going to use Tinyxp or Beast so the install would be small.  Can I put the OS on a flash drive and boot the PC on that?   Is there anything special I would need to do other than point to boot to the flash in the bios? 
Title: Re: Can you boot to a Flash Drive
Post by: Chunce DeLeone on March 17, 2009, 11:53:23 am
Wanted to add, would you prefera USB thumb drive or a cf card to IDE adapter?  Or it doesn't matter?
Title: Re: Can you boot to a Flash Drive
Post by: missioncontrol on March 17, 2009, 12:32:18 pm
where are the music files going to be stored?
Title: Re: Can you boot to a Flash Drive
Post by: ViciousXUSMC on March 17, 2009, 01:01:10 pm
You can do it, just depends on your motherboard.  Some of them can boot from usb, others can not.

If they can your golden.

Music space is there depending how much you have I think flashdrives go up to like 32gb now.  You could also look at a more practical SSD so that it acts like a traditional hard drive.
Title: Re: Can you boot to a Flash Drive
Post by: 2600 on March 17, 2009, 01:25:26 pm
Using a CF IDE adapter should be faster then a USB flash drive and works with all PC's that have an IDE port.

Put in a lot of RAM and disable the swap or virtual memory if you can.

Title: Re: Can you boot to a Flash Drive
Post by: BobA on March 17, 2009, 02:05:23 pm
Check your bios boot order and see if USB Drives are included.   If you are you are good to go.   If not the CF card in and IDE adapter works with any bios.   Only thing I find is CF cards are sometimes more expensive.  I guess flash drives are comming down due to volume and CF cards are not used as much.   Sometimes CF cards are being cleared out at good prices depending on where you shop.