Boot Linux from a USB stick?

mikester · 5 Feb 2012 at 21:00

Evening folks,

First-time poster in here, long time lurker. Having made a serious error with my Win7 netbook, I'm looking to take advantage and install a dual-boot Linux/Win7 and test drive various distributions for awhile.

At the moment, however, the netbook doesn't boot (Win7 issue - separate) so I'm hoping I can kill two birds with one stone.

Is it possible (I gather it is) to run a Linux dist off an 8GB USB stick, enabling me to save my files? I'd then wipe the HDD, install both OSes and be on my way.

Any suggestions to this effect would be massively appreciated. I'm keen to get started as soon as possible. Thanks!

mikester · 6 Feb 2012 at 13:55

Perfect. Thanks, guys.

mikester · 6 Feb 2012 at 21:38

Alright, so unetbootin works perfectly. Great little program, I must admit.

However when I switch on the netbook (BIOS modified accordingly), I am constantly presented with "Missing Operating System" and am told to press any key to reboot from the correct boot device.

The BIOS has identified the USB drive (hell, it even has the correct name) but it will not boot. I've tried four different distros (even tried Windows) but the error message is the same.

Full disclosure - I am running Mac OSX and am finding it incredibly hard to make it do what I want. No surprise there. Most of the useful programs are intended for Windows or Linux OSes, and I don't have access to anything but Macbooks at the moment. I could probably use my work computer, but I doubt that would fly with IT.

I've been searching for a tutorial to create a bootable Linux USB pen drive from OSX to no avail. Any suggestions?

mikester · 7 Feb 2012 at 18:24

CaptainCrash said:
Some BIOSes are a bit misleading in the way they handle USB drive booting - rather than selecting USB drive as the first boot device in the main menu, which is the obvious and most intuitive choice, you may need to select the *hard drive* as the first boot device, then look for a USB drive in the HDD submenu and bump it to the top (probably using the +/- keys).

It might not be anything to do with the problem you're encountering, but worth checking out.

I don't want to drag this into a BIOS thread, but now it's not even showing my HDD as an option. This is bizarre. USB stick has Ubuntu 11.04 ready to go, but nothing.