bootable usb key drives

[bbdd]

hooray! bootable usb key drives!

http://msn.com.com/2100-1104_2-5062987.html?part=msn&subj=ns_5062987&tag=msnhome

more here:

http://www.diskonkey.com/

edit:

hmm, not sure if you could use this for seti machines or not. not sure yet what sort of drivers / os / bios is required...

edit:

looks like you have to have bios support for these. anyone seen a mobo yet with support for bootable usb devices? this would be very cool for seti crunchers. portable, fast, small, low power, low heat, silent. what's not to love?

 

[Arkaine23]

Your board needs the option to boot from a usb device in it's bios. You can d/l what you need to make any usb pen drive bootable. Someon on [H] made a mini linux to run on 8mb pen drives. He uses it for folding@home. They access a folding client and process it on a single FAT32 partition from a network shared hard drive. Some people on OC are looking at adapting this for our own folding and seti teams.

http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=223070

 

[bbdd]

very cool

 

[TC]

Most of the latest mobos I've seen have a boot option for usb device.

 

[Greg M]

Dell is doing this with their new systems. Ordering a floppy drive is now an option. I had to update some firmware in my D600 laptop and using a USB key made it quick and easy.

Floppy drives get crammed with dust, they're finnicky on formatting, they're very slow, and you can only get 1.5MB on a floppy.

When imaging systems in a corporate environment, it will make it easy to have imaging software on a bootable key. You boot off the key, load the network drivers and imaging software off the key, pull down the image to the system over the network, and reboot. Voila! Fresh system.