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    #1

    How can you tell if an External USB drive is bootable?

    After my recent dilemma with an "Elements powered by WD" 250GB 3.5" external USB hard drive requiring a power cycle each time I want to switch operating systems on my laptop, I decided to ask if anyone here knows this:

    Is there any way you can tell (short of reading every document and FAQ for the product) whether a particular external USB hard drive is 100% BIOS call bootable?

    After purchasing the drive and messing with it for over 2 weeks trying to figure out why it would not boot installs of Kubuntu and Ubuntu (6.06, 6.10,7.04 32- and 64-bit distros), openSUSE 10.2, Mepis 6.5 beta, I stumbled upon the fact that if I freshly power cycle the drive and power on/reboot the machine that it will hear the boot call from the machine BIOS and return the boot data.

    Once the drive initialises and goes into power conserve mode, it will not spin back up for anything other than read/write I/O work.

    Is there a source of information for knowing which drives will always respect a call for boot data?

    Does anyone think that a list of what drives we as a community have found that will allow you to externally boot Kubuntu be a good idea?

    I would appreciate everyone's input.

    cheers

    jck
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    #2
    Re: How can you tell if an External USB drive is bootable?

    I don't know of any list, nor of anywhere it's listed (but that doesn't mean there isn't one).

    In any case, I would guess that most drives don't do this, but I don't have much experience with the detailed specs of external drives.
    For external use only.
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      #3
      Re: How can you tell if an External USB drive is bootable?

      Same usb problem??

      The USB devices on my "Q-Force laptop" are NOT found at start-up if the computer starts-up with the usb cables plugged IN.
      (This problem wasn't there in 6.10!)

      ONLY when the usb cables are "plugged IN" AFTER start-up, then all the usb devices are found & work well.
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        #4
        Re: How can you tell if an External USB drive is bootable?

        I'm not sure about QForce laptops, but the first thing I would do is look in your BIOS settings and see if there is something that enables compatibility for "Legacy USB".

        On my Dell, I had to enable that for USB booting.

        Good luck. Let us know what you find.

        cheers

        jck
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