jbryant

Hello,

As per the thread title, I'm wondering if I can boot from a small SD card. I've got several SD devices (cameras, etc) and don't want the hassle of trailing USB leads everywhere to get the data onto my PC.

I've got a Shuttle SN45, and therefore not much expansion capacity, and was looking at getting a silver matching internal 3.5 reader (this sort of thing - ebay item) that would replace the 3.5 floppy drive, only problem being that I'd have to remove my floppy drive forever (what's the problem I hear you all cry!) I don't want to be messing around with bootable CDs as they're too big and clunky, and cumbersome too

If I don't have the floppy, will I be able to use some of my old 8/16Mb SD cards to boot from? My Shuttle BIOS seems to support USB-HDD, USB-FDD, and USB-CD in the BIOS boot order, so I was wondering if anyone knows if I can do this? Searching the web has not helped me much in answering this question unfortunately.

Cheers
Julian

markwild

How often do you boot from NON-HDD ?

Also, as SD is not mentioned in the Bios list, I'd have thought 'Not' was the answer...

I'd have thought that the frequency of non-hdd boot would mean that this was a not-often issue..

What do you boot off floppy currently ? - Last time I booted from anything was either for OS install (CD) or Bios upgrade (floppy)

Sorry if this sounds negative, just trying to ascertain the size of the issue...

Mark

R1916v

You'll find that most card readers that are internal run off a usb header, so technically its the same as booting from usb...

I believe this can be doen from memory pens etc, so don't see why not.

jbryant

Not that often, to be fair, but I need to know I have a variety of clean bootable devices. I do a fair bit of rummaging around, messing with my system and swapping components.

I've had my fair share of devices break on me (CDs, HDDs, floppy drives, mobo controllers, etc) and these can caused far more problems than the cost of the units deserve. Piles of spare crap in the garage don't help as much of it has probably dies form the cold anyway! For that reason I have a set of bootable disks (partition magic, ghost, DOS CD bootables, that sort of thing) for troubleshooting when such problems arise. I'm not just being nostalgic!!! I saw a combo 1.44 floppy with built in SD/CF/all the others, but that was a few months ago and I've not seen one since. Can't remember the site it was on of course.

The SD reader would be attached to the internal USB header on the Shuttle mainboard, so perhaps this be counted as a USB floppy/hard disk?

Joolz

HHxx

Get a usb floppy drive?

Chris J

you can get Adapters that let you plug compact flash cards into an ide controller, and so can then boot off that, like http://linitx.com/product_info.php?c...aa744123a9fb02

Not sure about Sd stuff though.