Isostick: the USB memory stick that thinks it’s an optical drive

Re:Isostick: the USB memory stick that thinks it’s an optica... by a3_nm on Thursday July 28, 2011 @12:07PM (#2817458)

Does this really solve the whole problem? I've seen BIOSes (even on reasonably recent machines) which were unable to boot from an USB key, but I'm not sure that they would all have been able to boot from an USB optical drive either.

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Re:Isostick: the USB memory stick that thinks it’s an optica... by andrewflnr on Thursday July 28, 2011 @12:40PM (#2817624)

That's not the problem it's trying to solve. AFAICT, if you can't boot from USB, you're still out of luck.

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Re:Isostick: the USB memory stick that thinks it’s an optica... by eagan on Thursday July 28, 2011 @05:03PM (#2818923)

Some BIOSes will, oddly enough, boot USB optical drives but not USB mass storage. No idea why, it may have to do with the fact that way too many USB flash drives have piss-poor SCSI command support (they speak SCSI Block Commands, USB is just used as transport).

Here's a hilarious list of common problems in USB sticks: http://www2.one-eyed-alien.net/~mdharm/linux-usb/target_offe...

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Re:Isostick: the USB memory stick that thinks it’s an optica... by there on Thursday July 28, 2011 @01:33PM (#2817907)

on newer macs at least, the efi bios will not boot to certain usb hard drives, but will boot to a usb cd/dvd drive.

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