[strider_mt2k]

Here's my dilemma:
I have an internal 16GB flash drive that I've installed in my Mini 9.
I also have a small flash drive that I use to boot into Norton Ghost that I use to image my Mini 9's SSD for easier backup/restores.

With the internal drive installed the system won't try to boot from my nicely prepared and plugged-in external USB drive, but tries to boot from the INTERNALLY installed one instead and of course fails.

To date if I want to backup my Mini 9 I have to open up the access panel and unplug the internal drive first.
Not a deal breaker, and indeed the benefit of an internal connector, but still an inconvenience.

I've formatted the drive NTFS for performance and hoping the system would pass it over for the external drive that's prepared to be booted from but alas, no luck still.

:?: Is there a way to prepare the drive so that it WILL NOT be considered by the system when selecting "USB Device" to boot from? :?:

(This might benefit anyone who is installing a drive of this type in a more permanent fashion as well.)

[somms]

Not sure if you can but in the BIOS the USB Storage selection in the boot order menu may have a + in front. Can you expand this USB Storage list then select the ghost USB as top order?

[ytsejam1138]

So the Mini doesn't give an option to choose which USB drive. I don't have my Mini with me right now. But if I were to plug in two USB drives and select '0' at boot up, the min won't give a choice of USB devices?

Or am I missing the point here? Does the Mini handle your internal USB mod differently than say two USB drives plugged into the standard ports?

[strider_mt2k]

Originally Posted by somms

Not sure if you can but in the BIOS the USB Storage selection in the boot order menu may have a + in front. Can you expand this USB Storage list then select the ghost USB as top order?

I'm not given a choice, unfortunately.

Originally Posted by ytsejam1138

So the Mini doesn't give an option to choose which USB drive. I don't have my Mini with me right now. But if I were to plug in two USB drives and select '0' at boot up, the min won't give a choice of USB devices?

Or am I missing the point here? Does the Mini handle your internal USB mod differently than say two USB drives plugged into the standard ports?

I don't know what exactly is different about that drive being in there, unless the system just defaults to that port when booting or something.
As a matter of fact, when I do my backups I have my Ghost drive plugged in as well as an external USB hard drive to write the image to!

As an experiment I'm going to see what swapping the physical drive locations does.
I'll plug my Ghost drive into the internal port using a swivel adapter and I'll plug in the 16GB drive externally to see if it's actually the drive or not.
BRB

[strider_mt2k]

Okay here's some more juicy stuff for ya.

When I swap the drives I get the same NTFS boot error from my 16GB flash drive, so it's not the physical location.
However:

The 16GB flash drive is a SanDisk Cruzer Micro


When I plug a SanDisk Cruzer Micro 2GB drive in instead of the 16GB I don't get this problem.
The 2GB drive is formatted fat32 as was the 16GB drive when I first noticed this problem, so it isn't a formatting thing.

Interesting.

[ytsejam1138]

Do both of the Sandisk drives have the U3 software on them?

[strider_mt2k]

Nope.
U3 has been removed from each of 'em.

[somms]

Just confirmed that setting the boot order for multiple USB Storage drives is possible in the BIOS:

under 'Boot' of PhoenixBIOS Setup Utility,

cursor down to '+USB Storage'
then press enter which expands the USB Storage selection...

cursor down to the USB device you wish to boot from and Fn+F5/F6 to change the device to boot first..

alternatively you can cursor down to the USB device you wish not to boot from and hit shift+1 to disable that device allowing the other USB device to boot...

[tonygoodchild]

You could try running the HP DriveKey Boot Utility over it. I had a problem with one of those Cruzer keys (even after removing U3) but I ran this over it and got it booting into DOS (you need a couple more files to boot it but you can Google for those) so I would imagine you could then install whatever you wanted on it after that.

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/products/server...0/cp006049.exe

[GerallK]

I've also run into this problem, and get around it by pressing '0' during boot and selecting the specific USB drive I want to boot from.

BIOS rev A03, BTW...

Hope this helps!