====== Create Bootable USB Drive ======

I will go straight to the step by step instructions and put the so-called theoretical information towards the end of this page, so that people who are only interested in getting it done can get straight into it :-P

I have done this a lot of time on Linux, but I recently discovered that I may be able to do it on Windows as well - so I may insert something on that later.

===== Linux Platform =====

Tools needed (mostly available by default on all major Linux distro):
  * fdisk - for partitioning (recommended for USB drives with >4GB storage)
  * mkfs - for preparing filesystem (go for something specific e.g. mkdosfs for FAT filesystem)

Obviously, we also need a live system (system that mostly run on RAM and does no need to be installed to a hard disk) - for this, I recommend [[http://www.slax.org|Slax]] or [[http://www.porteus.org|Porteus]]. Both (Porteus is actually a Slax spin-off) are based on [[http://www.slackware.com|Slackware]], a highly recommended Linux distribution that I personally use.

===== Windows Platform =====

//coming soon...//

===== Hard Disks and Geometries =====

  - talk about CHS and LBA

===== Using fdisk =====

Creating 2GB partition at the end of the drive

  * for 512-bytes sector size, allocate 2x1024x1024x1024/512=4194304 sectors
    * subtract this value from total sector
    * make sure the end value of previous partition ends on resulting value

----

Case study 1

For 16GB devices (~14GB+2GB), when making the second partition as active partition, installing syslinux onto that partition is still okay. But when doing similar config on 32GB devices, syslinux fails. Why?