paul
Granpa Paul
Premium,MVM,ExMod 2006
join:2001-07-14
clubs:  
| bios flash from your pen drive!
After many flashes across my Seti farm, I dreaded every bios flash I had to do. First, most are run barebones, headless, no cases, let alone floppy drives. Second, for quite some time I've had to format and install the bios files on the same floppy drive that I am to flash to. Got too many read errors using the floppy on my main box, then using another floppy that I would bring to one of the many blades in my Seti farm, either here or at the warehouse.
Having to get a larger pen drive to shuttle work units to and from the warehouse left me with an extra 128MB pen drive. It occurred to me that I could use it to flash from if I could get it to be bootable.
There I was hung up, did a little searching and asked a couple of people how to get the pen drive to be bootable. Couldn't quite get it done, so I shelved the idea for a bit until I happened to ask MikeC from the Seti forum, while we were idling in the Starfire IRC channel. He came up with a link to a thread in a Dell forum that walked someone all the way through the process. (thanks, Mike!!!)
So here's a simplified version of setting up a drive to be bootable. There are many variations to this procedure, but this is the one I used.
First, get a Windows 98 boot disk. Disconnect your hdd's and any other IDE drives you have for this step. Plug in your pen drive, and boot from the Windows 98 boot disk.
Once booted, your C: drive should be your USB pen drive, since you disconnected your IDE drives. This is important!
Run fdisk from the Windows 98 boot disk, checking to make sure the disk you are modifying is the pen drive. Very easy to mistake a hdd for it, and lose all the data! In fdisk, delete all partitions on the pendrive and create a new one (or several if you prefer).
Once you have your partition made, make it active with fdisk. This is where I was hung up originally, for fdisk will only make the partition in C: drive active! This is the main reason for unplugging all you IDE drives, so your pen drive will show up in DOS as C:. Making the pen drive active is the crucial step in creating a boot disk, without it, it's not a bootable drive.
So now we need some DOS files to run when it boots. Again, there are many options here, this is the method I used. While still in DOS, after you've fdisked the pen drive and made it active, format the drive using the command "format C: /S" That command will format the drive, then place the DOS system files on the drive, making a plain, clean boot disk, no ramdisks or cd drivers, etc.
From there, I took the pen drive to my main rig, dropped the award flash file and the xxxx.bin file I wanted to flash with in the same folder as the DOS system files. Then took it over to the warehouse, plugged it into the blade I wanted to flash, got into bios to change the boot order to USB-HDD first. Restarted, booted into DOS, typed "awdflash.exe xxxxx.bin", and I was off to the races.... 
So there you have it. I can finally do away with a floppy drive forever. They'll all go in the junk box on the shelves...... hasta lavista....baby!! 
Paul
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FastEddie
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This is outstanding 
If you submit it to the FAQ's Here I'll make it a permanent part of the FAQ's and you'll get the credit for submitting it.
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HRM
God Bless America
Premium,MVM
join:2002-02-03
Darien, CT
clubs:
| reply to paul
Paul, this is awesome. I would suggest you go into a little more detail at a few spots for a FAQ. You say "set as active", and "run fdisk" but you don't explain how. The FAQ has to be a step by step.
I wouldn't have been able to figure it out, you da man!
One last question, does this work on NTFS and FAT?
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SKYHN
Lu.. Lu.. Lulululu
Premium
join:2001-09-16
99999 | reply to paul
How the heck did DOS recognize a pen drive...thats weird. |
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PetePuma
How many lumps do you want
Premium,MVM
join:2002-06-13
Arlington, VA | reply to paul
Don't you need a MOBO that supports booting off USB for this to work?
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Babar
Premium
join:2001-05-09
Washington
| reply to paul
Ah-ha! I think you answered my question from »Can You Boot an Inspiron From a Pen Drive?
I wonder if Partition Magic can be used to do all this on a pen drive?
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paul
Granpa Paul
Premium,MVM,ExMod 2006
join:2001-07-14
clubs:
| reply to PetePuma
said by HRM  :
Paul, this is awesome. I would suggest you go into a little more detail at a few spots for a FAQ. You say "set as active", and "run fdisk" but you don't explain how. The FAQ has to be a step by step.
I wouldn't have been able to figure it out, you da man!
One last question, does this work on NTFS and FAT?
Well, it's too late for me to edit the post, and I submitted it to the FAQ with a link to this thread. So we'll have continue the step by step instructions here.
Once you boot with the Windows 98 boot disk (from floppy), you'll have a DOS A: prompt flashing. Type in fdisk, and hit return. Once in fdisk, you'll have options to create a partition, delete a partition and set partition as active. To be safe, I delete all partitions and started over. Once deleted, I chose 1- create DOS Partition, then the next screen, chose 1- create primary DOS patition, enter, then chose maximum available size- Y, and enter. The system will create a primary partition, exit and restart. (not sure it will restart, it may exit back to fdisk options)
Let it restart with the Windows 98 boot disk, and run fdisk again. This time select 2- set active partition. If the partion you just created isn't active, then set it so.
As far as NTFS, I haven't a clue. The whole key here is having software that will fdisk and write a bootable master boot record, if I'm not mistaken. There are many such utilities, I chose Windows 98 because it's a basic DOS boot disk with the tools I needed to make a drive bootable.
said by SKYHN :
How the heck did DOS recognize a pen drive...thats weird.
Pen drives are seen to bioses as hdd's. For all intents and purposes, a pendrive is a solid state hard drive.
said by PetePuma :
Don't you need a MOBO that supports booting off USB for this to work?
Yes, most boards released in the last couple of years have this feature, I believe. Could be wrong, though. The 3 I checked, a i865, a NF2, and a SIS 740 board 2 years old had the option.
Paul
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likwidkool
Premium
join:2002-05-05
Jersey City, NJ
| reply to paul
very sweet! I have been looking for a way to get rid of my floppies, and this very thing has kept me from doing so. I have been eying some pen drives recently too. I just recently started using memtest from cd, and also using abit winflash, but I don't need the stress!:D This is perfect.
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paul
Granpa Paul
Premium,MVM,ExMod 2006
join:2001-07-14
clubs:
| reply to paul
Coming soon- a dual boot pen drive, DOS for flashing, and linux for running memtest86. Drunkula from the Seti and linux forums is working with me using XOSL boot manager.....
Now that is going to be sweet!!!
Paul
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hman1
join:2002-01-17
Canada | reply to paul
Ya I done this before but my motherboard supports it. Anyways, this is another sweet way to get rid of the use of floppies.
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FastEddie
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I ordered a Pen drive off eBay for a couple of bucks.
Going to try this out. 
Also need to see if we can get Windows XP boot disks on the pen drive and get it to boot Windows XP.
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Babar
Premium
join:2001-05-09
Washington
| reply to paul
FWIW, I just picked up a 128M USB pen drive from newegg for $38. It's the Apacer brand, and it comes with a utility to make the drive bootable! Haven't tried it yet, but it ought to be a lot easier than all this!
I'll let ya know when I get around to playing with the boot aspect. Right now, enjoying quick USB 2.0 speed transferring stuff between computers. It's the equivalent of 88 floppies - I love it!
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"Geez, I'm goin' crazy out there at the lake."
[text was edited by author 2003-09-27 20:16:10] |
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paul
Granpa Paul
Premium,MVM,ExMod 2006
join:2001-07-14
clubs:
| Babar, please post the name of the utility it ships with. I had looked around for some such utility before finding the win98 boot disk method. Sure would make it easier if we had a little app to do this with.
Like I said, most of my fleet is barebones config, it'll be great not to have to bother with floppy or cdrom any more.
I think I'm going to love being able to boot memtest86 from a linux pendrive even more than flashing with a DOS bootable pendrive.
Fast Eddie, what are the advantages of booting from XP's boot disk?
Paul
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Babar
Premium
join:2001-05-09
Washington
| The utility is Apacer's Flash Disk Utility. It ships on the CD that comes with it - I couldn't find it on their website. It enables making the drive bootable, and also has an encryption utility.
Out of curiosity, I ran a few other manufacturer's utilities to see if they worked across different platforms, but mostly no go.
PM me for more info.
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