USB drive preventing boot up

Corncrake2

Hi all,
I have a usb disk drive which prevents my Windows Vista laptop from booting up with the error "Invalid system disk" and " replace the disk then press any key" which is tedious !
(and puts extra strain on the plugs & leads)
I have 3 other usb disk drives and 2 flash sticks which dont do this, so I can leave them in all the time.

So, my question is how do I make the troublesome drive behave like the others ?
ie. make it so that the laptop does not wish it to be a system disk ?

I dont want to set the bios to not boot from usb cos from time to time I want to boot into Linux on external usb device.
This usb drive is powered from the usb port whereas the other 3 have their own psu, is this significant ?
I have tried googling for this error with usb drives but all I come up with is info on how to make the drive bootable ! The opposite of what I wish

I suppose I could go buy another powered drive, but that would be admitting defeat
Thanks in advance for any help.

easy

Corncrake2 wrote: »

I dont want to set the bios to not boot from usb cos from time to time I want to boot into Linux on external usb device.

But that's the solution to your problem.

You will HAVE to set the bios so that it boots from the internal hard drive when you don't want it to boot from the usb drive. - OR plug in the USB drive after you have booted.

Your laptop isn't psychic, it can't just know when you do/don't want it to boot from the external device. That's why you have bios setting options !

Corncrake2

easy wrote: »

it can't just know when you do/don't want it to boot from the external device.

But it does already know with 3 of the external drives ! It is only with this 4th drive that it does not know !!

fwor

A possible reason is that one of the partitions on that drive has the "Boot" flag set.

AFAIK, Windows Disk Management does not allow you to check or change this (it seems to only describe a partition as "Boot" if the system was actually booted from it).

However, a GPARTED LiveCD will allow you to view this flag and, if set, should allow you to unset it.

Corncrake2

Thanks fwor, I will read up those.

Only one partition (as far as I know !) on each device, all worked 'out of the box' as supplied by the various manufs. (ie. already formatted, I've not been fiddling )

It seems the OS is happy to skip past the 3 drives and 2 sticks not expecting them to be bootable and proceed to the C:, but thinks the 4th drive is a floppy !!!

fwor

Ah - just checked and it looks like there is a slightly different use of terminology between Windows and Linux worlds.

If you plug it in while Windows is up and running and view it via Disk Management, does the USB drive show as "Active"? If so, try marking as not so (in Windows, Active apparently = bootable).

Corncrake2

fwor wrote: »

looks like there is a slightly different use of terminology between Windows and Linux worlds.

Hehee not for the first time
Thanks for looking,
but no all 4 seem to be the same,
Simple Basic FAT32 Healthy (Primary Partition)
The only one with active is the C:
Simple Basic NTFS Healthy ( System Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)

That's a shame I thort for a mo you were on to sumat there !
I wonder what that Crash Dump is, runs over to google , , ,

Mista_C

You could also change the boot order in the BIOS and use the Boot Device Menu to select the relevant drive on the occasions you need to. It's usually F12 or the ESC key at power on to bring up the Boot Device Menu.

Corncrake2

Mista_C wrote: »

You could also change the boot order in the BIOS and use the Boot Device Menu to select the relevant drive on the occasions you need to. It's usually F12 or the ESC key at power on to bring up the Boot Device Menu.

Thanks, that sounds like a good backup plan if I cant find out what is special about this troublesome drive that makes it look like a floppy

(off topic : ,, meanwhile I'm off down town to see if I can get any sense out of the crashed NatWest )

Corncrake2

fwor wrote: »

A possible reason is that one of the partitions on that drive has the "Boot" flag set.
AFAIK, Windows Disk Management does not allow you to check or change this

Thanks, I think that must be my problem, or I am not using the Disk Management correctly.
I have been reading up on MBR and VBR and it's gotta be in there somewhere !
I think what I need now is a hex reader or similar so I can compare the MBR or VBR ( not sure which, still learning ! ) of the 4 drives.

fwor

Have you tried booting from that GPARTED LiveCD yet? It lets you see and set each of the flags individually for each partition on the HDD.

Boot, Diag, Hidden, LBA, LVM, Palo (whatever that is), Prep and RAID are all visible under Manage Flags.