bootable usb flash?

[moondog777]

Hi: I was just woundering if it was possable to make a flash drive bootable? I have one but when I go to format it the" make disk bootable" is blacked out.
I'm trying to update my bios and I don't have a floppy installed in my machine. There has got to be an easy way to do this.... I hope.

 

[belvdr]

Try this:

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10877_11-6160062.html

Search engines are great. You should try it.

 

[dragonsprayer]

yes but you stand a good chance in a few months of not booting - flash is not reliable for long term use

 

[belvdr]

yes but you stand a good chance in a few months of not booting - flash is not reliable for long term use

Hmmm, why is that? None of my USB sticks have had any issue.

 

[RandMcnally]

yes but you stand a good chance in a few months of not booting - flash is not reliable for long term use

You are completely wrong. It's more likely that a solid state drive, like a hard drive will fail before a flash drive. Flash lasts much longer than an HDD.

 

[2root3]

my $0.02

The problem is not the length of time data can be held for, its the amount of times you can read/write to the drive, usb sticks will only let you read/write about 100,000 times before they start to slow or crap out,

If you add up the amount of times an OS reads/rights temporary, driver, page and reg files, the stick won't last too long.

Knoppix linux is better for this as you can limit the page files to system RAM, and use as much RAM as possible without writing back to the usb.

To be honest I don't think are many statistics regarding this so give try it.

2root3

 

[function9]

Try this moondog:
http://www.bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm
I like HP's utility myself pretty straightforward.