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61 Comments
- javip, on 10/12/2007, -2/+30you are too cool, can I be your friend?
- halleyscomet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+22@strictnein
Clearly you've never tried boot install Windows from a USB Drive.
Windows was not designed to run off a USB drive, and the installer can't see a lot of USB devices.
The interesting part of the article is NOT that you can boot off a USB drive, but that someone figured out how to do it with Windows.
I've been trying to figure out how to do this in relation to installing Windows XP on my Mac using Boot Camp. One big problem is the tendency for Windows to reload the entire USB layer when you add or remove a device. This isn't a major issue with removable drives, as it just applies any cached writes, restarts the USB layer and moves on. This becomes a MAJOR issue if the boot device is being rendered inaccessible for a few nanoseconds at a time.
These tips may very well let me get Windows off the internal drive on my Mac and onto a USB device. As a side bonus, I could then (Hardware profiles willing) have a Windows install I could run off a different Mac when I upgrade my hardware. - billflu, on 10/12/2007, -4/+19We will now see the "kevinrose" effect take place on this one.
- Klarth, on 10/12/2007, -12/+26ya i am well l33t micro$oft winDOZE GEDDIT??? LOLLOLOL.
You're an idiot. - m1k3d, on 10/12/2007, -5/+18Only problem is a usb flash drive has a certain amount of read/write uses untill the memory becomes corrupt or unusable.
However a very very cool idea. - duke_nate, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14I suppose, if you own the site, you are at least entitled to a few Dupes.
- NSMike, on 10/12/2007, -6/+16WARNING:
Troll post above. Do not read or reply.
Troll = blackbeltbones - Jaymoon, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13$10 says he posted it just to show he "contributes to the digg community"...
- drogo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10@mikewitt
I don't think you understand what he's talking about. The simple act of using the flash drive causes it to fail over time. Higher quality flash drives have the ability to spread the actions out over the whole thing, and increase the useful life, but that doesn't change the fact that after ~100,000 or so write operations, the used sectors begin to fail. So things like swap files on flash can kill it very fast.
If you don't use it, then yes the flash will outlast an HD that is actually in use, but hey, if the HD isn't in use, then it will last just as long. ;-) - Anubis2051, on 10/12/2007, -6/+15Whoever figured this out is a genius. Could come in handy down the road...
- succubuskiller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9I mostly use the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows. Sometimes a little easier to use compared to Flash drive, since some old school computers don't have that option in BIOS. But majority allow for Booting from CD. Put on a CD-RW and you can update when/if necessary.
- seasleepy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6UBCD site: http://ubcd4win.com
Really really freaking handy little tool. And as it's basically a preconfigured BartPE setup, the instructions in the article should work for it too (although I've just used it on CD). - cquinnd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Topher06
I think he meant Damn Small Linux (DSL) a popular small form factor distribution. - BrianWGray, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6BartPE has made this easy for a long time using PE2USB.cmd It takes forever to load off of the thumb-drive. You don't even want to attempt it on usb 1.1 unless you need to go for coffee.. across town. Not to mention it uses excessive amounts of memory to load.
- jues, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Comedy, I post plenty of useful finds, perl scripts, administration nuggets and Mr Rose posts and article that was "old news" six months ago when the first comments started appearing on it...
I'm gonna go write my own digg, we'll have martini's and everything!!!!! - ithon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I thought this has been dugg before, but it's different then the other diggs, (or am I wrong).
http://digg.com/hardware/Windows_In_Your_Pocket
http://digg.com/software/15_Steps_to_Install_Windows_XP_on_a_Flash_Drive - mikewitt, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10No, not really. While everything has a measured MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures), a flash drive, if not destroyed has an MTBF of about 100,000 years. An HD has an MTBF of about 50,000 Hours. So the flash drive will last longer than the HD.
- yottabite, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8This is not Windows... it's BartPE (nice try though) and is nothing new. Marked as inaccurate.
- Wootery, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"Life goes on. :)".
...'Life'?
Oh right, _that_. I'll get one later. Busy digging. - dbr_onix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4You hide your Mac-Bias well....
But, you do somewhat hint at a good idea : Storing Virtual Machines on movable storage (External harddrive, an MP3 player etc)
Parallels seems like the best software to use for it, since there is clients for Windows, OS X and Linux (Unlike VMWare, which I'm not sure if it has a OS X client)
That way, assuming either the machines your using has Parallels installed, or you can install it, you should be able to have a cross-platform copy of Windows or Linux (Or OS X if you use the oh-so-legal OS X86 version). Not sure if Parallels has it, but in VMWare you can tell it to split the harddrive files into 2GB splits (So it'll work on a FAT32 drive, which allows it to mount on OS X)
- Ben - mikewitt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3MTBF here is under normal conditions. Transistors don't wear out, but they can oxidize. That is why a thumb drive, if left somewhere that won't physically destroy the media, will take many orders of magnitude longer to be destroyed than a conventional HD. So when I say MTBF, I mean under constant read/write cycles. A flash drive wont deteriorate in my lifetime or yours, unless someone /something physically destroys it. We could all die, and should an alien race come here in 50,000 years, approximately 2/3 of all flash drives that are in tact will be readable. Compare that to oh... 0 HDs that would be still working.
- joerod, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3this is great! you can go into machine that won't boot and save files before you re-image . it. I now have a Linux and xp boot flash drive. very nice (borat voice)
- tornpage, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8This just in: It is now possible to burn songs to a CD and play them in any CD player!
- SgtBeavis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3VMware's OSX product (codenamd Fusion) is in early beta testing. I spent this week at VMworld in LA and got a hands on with Fusion. The public beta is scheduled to begin in December. They were fuzzy on the final release but said it would be out in 2007.
BTW, the beta is pretty damn good and Fusion will be a superior product to Parallels (which isn't a bad product by any stretch of the imagination) Of course we'll have to see what Parallels does for an encore.. - JacNet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Done with Knoppix before. =)
- MikeOSX, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Heres one better, take an older generation iPod (one that supports firewire), load mac os x on it, install parallels or bootcamp, then load windows xp. Sure you wont be able to boot a windows pc from it, but at least you get two operating systems on one iPod
- KungFuJ35u5, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Interesting article, although the person who wrote it sounds like a fifth grader. English isn't everybody's best subject, I guess. I'd much rather prefer puppy linux on a flash drive, it has more functionality than a stripped down copy of XP.
- rhesuspieces00, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Its pretty sad that this gets a digg article. Installing Linux or Mac OS X on a flash drive is fairly trivial.
- conedude13, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I've tried this before, it's no big deal once you get it working. And it took a pretty long time to get it working, too. With the variety of flash drives out there you are going to have to do some mods to the instructions. especially if the links in the article, linking to the software needed, are dead.
What i really wanted from an article like this is to move xp off of my hard drive and onto my flash drive. essentially making my flash drive my computer, and my tower an os'less case. thats what people should start working on figuring out. and if you need a boot aid, use the ultimate boot cd. - wush, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3MTBF based on what usage conditions?
- Aeror, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It's not really a problem. What's limited is the number of writes, not reads. And since it uses the usb drive like a livecd, it never writes to it.
- smohan123, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This looks like a carbon copy of the other dozen older digg stories about flash drive versions of WinXP. Use the search function before you post, fools.
- halleyscomet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@conedude13
You can get close to that.
VMWare offers a free player, as well as a beta utility that can convert a live Windows install into VMWare image. The end result, is you have the capacity to, for free, convert your running Windows install into a "portable" install with the following caveats:
It will be running in VMWare, so there will be a performance hit and no hardware 3d acceleration.
You need to install the free VMWare player on any machine that will be using it.
As an alternative, you could use QEMU to run Windows off a Flash Drive. You have the problems of needing to either install Windows to the QEMU session or convert a live system / VMWare image to a QEMU session, but QEMU can run off the flash drive and doesn't need to be installed on the host OS. The same 3D and performance issues apply though. - Topher06, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I don't know, its been about 3 years since the last time I have seen a motherboard that couldn't boot from USB. I mean, perhaps some cheap off-brand motherboard or some OEM crap used by Dell or HP won't, but most Asus and mainstream brands have been able to boot from USB for a while. I was stuck scratching my head for a few minutes as to why my previous computer I bought 3 years ago wouldn't boot suddenly saying there was no OS on the drive and it was because the motherboard found a flash card I had left in a printer and was trying to boot from it.
If your computer is older then that, I highly recommend and upgrade, your missing so much. - maxshanly, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2This a bit old, but oh well. Life goes on. :)
- penguindude15, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1couldn't you do this with the new version of bootcamp?
- halleyscomet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@dbr_onix
VMWare does not yet have an Intel Mac version on the market, but they've demoed it running in their labs and have claimed a vague,. future release data. - Guspaz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Many motherboards don't support booting off USB devices. That support can only be found in more recent PCs. Stuff as recent as the AthlonXP generation is possibly SOL.
- jues, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I was going for the Simpsons "Casino" episode where Bart gets kicked out of the Springfield Casino so elects to make his own in his treehouse.
- conedude13, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@ halleyscomet
but you do not know of a way to have your hard drive disk completely formated and blank and have xp on the flash drive? i would like the hard drive blank and xp on the flash drive and have all of the programs stored on the blank hard drive.
is this possible with ubuntu? - CaptQuark, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This seems to be old information. PC magazine also showed how to do this over a month ago. (Search PCmag.com for "USB BOOT")
The article also says you can only format a flash drive using FAT-16. This is also wrong. - SgtBeavis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2digg simply for the Borat reference :-)
- conedude13, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1i think that there might be some type of code mod that prevents the founder of the site's stories get buried.
true? - 98acura, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3I heard one day, we will be able to burn movies to DVD's .... I can't wait!
- sancho, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Parallels plans on introducing accelerated GL/DirectX support in the very near future, which is something VMWare has never seemed to be interested in. If Parallels manages this, they will get my dollar.
I like VMWare for the snapshot features, but being able to play Windows games without rebooting has long been one of my computer fantasies. - finalmillenium, on 10/12/2007, -9/+9Portable OS that even idiots could use, and it doesn't touch the HD.
Why would you not want that?
Unless you prefer Linux in which case DSL works very well. - adstretch, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1futurama reference don't see many of those.
not even being sarcastic, you really don't - djnero6, on 11/29/2007, -0/+0:(
- georgep22, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Hi
you can do it much easier with recently released software called Setup Studio. I learned about it through review (5/5) on softpedia.com
http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/windows/Setup-Studio-Review-39587.shtml
regards george - puppetj, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0hp link is dead
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