Booting from a USB Flash Drive and Optimizing Performance

I know that you can boot Leopard from a USB flash drive, and I have a 16GB flash drive I'm using as a bootup disk on this 2006 MacBook I have that has a broken hard drive (it was recalled, but the recall ended in 2010).
The problem is that it's very slow. I have about 8GB of free space on it, so it can't be the VRAM being too small. The USB speed just stinks. There must be ways to optimize the OS to run off of a slow drive by accessing data as infrequently as possible. What can I do to speed this up? Should I disable hard disk sleeping? Should I use some kind of Mac tuneup/optimization tool's feature?
I plan to get an internal hard drive for it, but I'm stuck with this for a while.

Not all USB2 Flash drives are equal, in fact I bought 2 16 GB USB drives for cheap, as along side of them were even the same brand 16 GB Flash Drives just a different model, for 5 times as much!
Me was thinking how bad could they be? Well, they could be 5 times worse than other USB2 flash drives... LOL on me!
They under extremely rare occasions will Read or Write at 5 MB/s, & very often 1 MB/s...
My Buffalo Flash drives do near USB2's top speed, see some diffs...
http://usbspeed.nirsoft.net/
Optimizing yours will give little benefit.
You could also do a USB2 RAID0 setup if you have enough ports.

Similar Messages

How do I boot from a USB flash drive?

I have two different Toshiba laptops. In the BIOS settings I only see the following options.
Laptop 1:
CD/DVD
FDD
LAN
HDD1/SSD1
Laptop 2:
HDD1/SSD1
HDD2/SSD2
eSATA HDD
CD/DVD
FDD
LAN
Is it possible to make either computer boot from a USB flash drive?
Thanks in advance for any help,
yeto

FDD (Floppy Disk Drive) equates to USB in my Toshiba laptops. Seems like it's taking some BIOS designers a long time to catch up with the rest of the computer world!
C.B.
Toshiba Sat. C75D-B7260 Win 8.1 64 Bit--Toshiba Sat. L775D-S7132 Win 7 HP SP1 64 Bit and Win 10 PRO Technical Preview--Toshiba Sat. L305-S5921 Win Vista SP2 32 Bit

My compaq cq62-214nr will not boot from a usb flash drive

I have a Compaq CQ62-214 NR Notebook. When I enter the bios boot options screen with F9 there is a blank space where Boot from USB/Flash Drive should be. If I enter the bios setup and move usb flash drive up to the first option above Notebook hardrive and Internal CD/DVD Rom ,save the changes to the BIOS then Reboot. Enter the boot options screen again the blank line moves up to the first choice slot but still is blank. If I press enter over that black option the computer does not boot from the OS I have install on the usb flash drive it just starts its normal windows boot screen. YES I have upgraded the BIOS to the lates version F.37
Can somone tell me what is wrong.

Try booting into the one time boot menu.
Step 1: As soon as you turn on the computer on the hp invent screen keep tapping F9 key.
Step 2: you will get boot otions such as hard drive, optical drive, USb drive
Step 3: You can hit enter on the usb flash drive. Should boot from the os on your flash drive
*Although I am an HP employee, I am speaking for myself and not for HP.
****Click the White Kudos star to say thanks****
****Please mark Accept As Solution if it solves your problem****

Can't boot from a USB flash drive

I believe this ability was lost after updating to BIOS 80.52 following HP's "strong recommendation".No warning was given that this update would remove this ability and see that "Due to security changes, after this BIOS update is installed, previous versions cannot be reinstalled."
I have tried disabling Secure Boot and enabling Legacy Boot, and tried re-applying BIOS defaults.
Is there a particular combination of BIOS settings that I haven't been able to find?As the warranty on my computer expired in July 2014, the HP Customer Support Contact page won't even accept my request for assistance - despite the "strongly recommended" BIOS update being made available *after* this date. I require the ability to boot from USB flash drives ... how can this now be achieved?
Is there an HP BIOS for a more recent HP product with the JasmineR motherboard (or an AMI or other BIOS) available and how could I install it?
Boot a BIOS flashing program from CD or DVD and somehow bypass the HP BIOS's block on updates? Thanks in advance for any advice

Hi, thanks for the quick reply. I don't have another PC handy but will try to find one. The USB flash drive definitely does NOT appear in the boot menu - even as an HDD or CD/DVD as I have seen mentioned elsewhere as a possibility - and all USB devices are enabled in the BIOS settings and USB HDD and USB Floppy/CD are above rEFInd and all other entries in the boot order. I should also have mentioned that I've tried a (Lexar) USB flash drive prepared approximately a year ago with GParted Live which *has* previously booted the machine, and also different models of flash drives (Toshiba, Transcend) and different methods of preparing them such as burning bootable ISO images with Win32DiskImager, Universal USB Installer and Rufus, and manually creating and formatting a bootable FAT32 partition with diskpart (as per https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj200124.aspx) and copying in System Rescue CD/GParted/Clonezilla files, ensuring there is an /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.efi file. In diskpart, the "attributes disk" command shows that the USB drives are not marked as bootable and "help attributes disk" says READONLY is currently the only disk flag that may be changed. (Don't know if this means anything as the GParted disk isn't "bootable" but did boot) Did the BIOS update disable enumerating USB devices until later in the Windows 8.1 boot process?

Booting from a USB Flash Drive

Is this possible? I travel a lot and to have a flash drive for use in an emergency would be great.

This could be the device you are looking for, the TechTool Protege. It says it is a 1 GB, flash memory, pocket-sized device that can boot Macs via FireWire. It says it comes with the latest version of OS X already on it. It sounds interesting, but I've not heard of it before.
http://www.micromat.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=34
Regards,
Steve M.
Edit: This seems to be the same device without the TechTool stuff on it.
http://www.kanguru.com/fireflash.html
Message was edited by: Steve M.

[SOLVED] can't boot from ssd after "reset" from recovery usb flash drive

I have a Twist s230u with the original Hitachi 500GB hdd, running Windows 8.1. I want to replace the Hitachi 500GB hdd in my Twist s230u with a PNY 240GB SSD that i've purchased.
While running Windows from the Hitachi HDD drive I followed the "create a recovery drive" procedure to create a recovery usb. Then I removed the Hitachi HDD from the s230u and installed the PNY 240 SSD in its place. I booted the s230u from the recovery flash drive that I made. I selected the "Reset Your PC" option and then the option to wipe all partition/files. After the Reset completes, I try booting from the SSD but am unable to do so. I just go back to the F12 boot menu.
I put the SSD in a drive dock attached to another computer. Disk Management shows the partitions as follows -
I've looked at the partitions on the SSD after the Reset - Disk Management console shows a 1000 MB Recovery partition, a 260MB EFI System partition, and a 221GB primary partition with volume label Windows8_OS. It is not marked as Boot, Page File, or Crash Dump.
Diskpart shows an an additional 128MB Reserved partition between the EFI partition and the primary partition.
I do notice that the 10.6 Lenovo Recovery partition is not present - but I did make sure that I included that partition on the recovery key - though the files on the recovery key only use 8.03 GB for some reason. Made the key on two different flash media.
Diskpart also shows the following for the SSD:
DISKPART> attributes disk
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No
Clustered Disk : No
(It also looks like this when I run DISKPART from the recovery media with the SSD inside the internal drive bay of the s230u.)
When I did the Reset on the SSD in the s230u, and when I tried to boot from it - I had the Secure Boot disabled, the "Legacy Boot first" option set, etc.
Can anyone point me in the right direction to be able to boot Windows 8.1 from this SSD in the s230u? I've been working on this for a couple of days.
(I also tried cloning the HDD to the SDD using Minitool Partition Wizard, Macrium Reflect, Clonezilla, Acronis, etc - the SSD wouldn't boot after those clone operations either, and I thought maybe I'd have better luck with a reinstall from the USB recovery media.
(I also tried installing from a Windows 8 iso I burned to a DVD. I got a product id mismatch message when I tried to install from that, and I was not allowed to proceed.)

well, I seem to have solved my own problem. Maybe someone will learn from my mistakes.
I went into System Setup, went to the Startup tab, and changed the boot setting from "Both" to "UEFI Only". After doing this I booted from my USB recovery drive, and Reset the PC. After the Reset, I booted the s230u from the ssd, and I booted into a fresh Windows 8 installation.
It seems that the Reset operation could not work properly while the boot setting was "Both" (UEFI and Legacy) and "Legacy First."
I got a clue when I looked at the contents of the EFI System Partition and there was nothing there except a Temp folder. The EFI System Partition had not been properly written by the Reset operation. I got some helpful hints on how to see the contents of the EFI System Partition here - http://www.fixedbyvonnie.com/2013/12/how-to-repair-the-efi-bootloader-in-windows-8/#.U-Qz2_ldW7q
I've also buggered up my original HDD now, so that it won't boot to Windows now. Now to fix that!

Booting a DMG from a USB Flash Drive?

Is there anyway I can boot from a USB flash drive? I don't have a DVD burner to burn the image onto, so I have to resort to this. I'm running an Intel iMac (late 2006) on Tiger.
Any help is appreciated.

If you mean boot up your Mac then the answer is no. If you mean open a .dmg file then the answer is yes.

SA30-414 boot from the USB floppy drive

Hi All!
I'm tryin to get my my satellite A30-414 to boot from the USB floppy drive and enter the dos mode, but all i get is a black screen (without a cursor, of course!!), and then the windows XP logon page directly. Can you tell me whether this model has a boot device menu hotkey?
Also, I may have permanently changed some boot configurations (namely by holding down the F12 at startup and then the F2 key at a later try) with my attempts to get the machine to boot from floppy drive: now even when the floppy drive is not connected i get this awkward black screen and then, after a few seconds, the windows logon page. How can I acceed the setup menu and check?
Thanks in advance for your help!

Thanks to you all for your support!
Now I'll tell how this problem originated. I connected the standard usb fdd with a standard DOS boot disk to which I had added a firmware upgrade for my DVDrom unit. I powered on and held the F12 key down expecting to see the boot device selection menu, instead i got a black screen for a few seconds and then the winXP logon page. At this point i rebooted and held down the F2 key with the same purpose. But the computer went into some kind of hybernation and by pressing the power-on button it shut down.
From that moment on startup I don't see the BIOS POST page anymore: countless seconds of black screen and then the WinXP logon page. The most optimistic explanation to this is that i inadvertently changed the boot order, so it searches for floppy first, and when it doesn't find it then it goes to C:\. Does it sound logical?

HT5172 Glad to have USB capability on my new iMac. Been in Mac world all of 2 days now. Question - I downloaded photos from a Centron flash drive and am wondering if flash drives have to be ejected the same as on a PC? Can't find how to do it. Thanks.

Been in the iMac world now all of 2 days. I'm glad to have USB capability. I downloaded photos from a Centron flash drive and now need to remove the flash drive. Do you eject flash drives on iMacs as we did on PC's? Can't find an answer in the support area. Thanks...

Yes. All external drives regardless of how they are connected must be ejected before they can be unplugged.

I have a 2012 Mini with a fusion drive that won't boot from a usb cloned drive. It came with 10.8.2 pre installed. I have zapped the PRAM and reset the SMC. Any thoughts?

I have a 2012 Mini with a fusion drive that won't boot from a usb cloned drive. It came with 10.8.2 pre installed. I have zapped the PRAM and reset the SMC. Any thoughts?

When I tried using a recently downloaded (from the App store) version of MtLion 10.8.2 (12C60) I could NOT get the new MacMini to install or boot from a USB I had previously made. I was however able to use the Recovery Mode of the MacMini to create a bootable SSD which I had installed. The problem arose when I went back into Recovery DU as it saw the seperate drives (SSD & HD) as a broken Fusion Drive. Interestingly DU from the boot volume had NO issues and reported NO faults. It was the Recovery DU that identified the faulty Fusion Drive configuration. At this point I am definately out of my depth but my speculation is that the Recovery Volume is being used in some fashion to form the method or pattern that DU assigns files to the drives, System Report sees the drives as seperate volumes with all their individual characteristics.
Disk Utility did not make a bootable USB, I don't have or use CCC or Super Duper.
Here is the longer version I've been compiling:
Having bought a late 2012 Mac Mini(6,2) i7 2.66GHZ with the standard 1TB 5400 HD and 4GB of RAM (base model) I immediately decided to install a Mercury Elite 6g 240GB SSD and up the RAM to 16GB. I received both shipments on the same day and had all my new toys in front of me. After following the video advice on OWC’s website for the installation of the second drive I started the mini and formatted the SSD to accept the OS from Recovery on the original HD. This MacMini shipped with 10.8.2 (12C2034) as the OS, the normal build of 10.8.2 is (12C60). Having used Recovery Disk Utility to format the SSD it came back with an error that DU could’t Repair. I went ahead and installed the OS on the SSD and the Mini booted normally from both drives. The issue I encountered with this setup was that iMovie encountered an “unexpected error” and would not save a completed project. I therefore decided to figure the drive issue out because I suspect the new Fusion File Management software didn’t like my configuration with drives that Recovery DU saw as needing to be “fixed”. After spending some time on the phone with both OWC and Apple Support I took the plunge and used Internet Recovery Disk Utility and allowed both drives to be “fixed” after which DU created a Fusion Drive (Logical Drive) that I then ran Repair Disk on and it showed up as a single drive in DU. It works perfectly as described by Apple’s site:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5446
Having checked the Link Speed and Negotiated Speed they both show as 6g so I’m pleased not to have lost performance due to it being fuzed to a 3g 5400 drive. The biggest drawback is that Apple’s Fusion Management only allows for 1 additional partition and I would have preferred more than that.
I have sourced some additional information here:
http://blog.macsales.com/15619-special-note-for-adding-an-ssd-to-a-2012-mac-mini ?
http://blog.macsales.com/15619-special-note-for-adding-an-ssd-to-a-2012-mac-mini ?
http://blog.macsales.com/15619-special-note-for-adding-an-ssd-to-a-2012-mac-mini ?
http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/08/05/undocumented-corestorage-commands/
If anyone has a factory Fusion Drive could you please post the Link and Negotiated Speeds of both drives? This information can be found in Apple > About This Mac > More Info… > System Report > Serial ATA and the drives should show up as discrete drives with their info listed separately.

I erased my HD. Now I can't instal mountain lion from my bootable flash drive, and keep getting "installation error. Try again."

I bought mountain lion, made a bootable flash drive.
I booted from it and it went to upgrading right away!
So I stopped it and went to my former recovery partition I erased my HD because I wanted a clean start.
Now I can't instal mountain lion from the bootable flash drive, and keep getting "installation error. Try again."
and there is no 4 choices window.
I don't know what to do.

How did you create the USB install thumb drive? If it was with Disk Utility I have run into this problem and have since used THIS program to make the USB install drive.
As to your problem you only have one option and that is to Reinstall the Original OS X version that came on your computer or if you still have the Lion Recovery Partition use that to reinstall Lion. Or if you system came with Lion and you have No Lion Recovery HD Partition you can boot the system from over the internet and Reinstall Lion.
At startup hold down the Command+Option+r keys until you saa a spinning Globe in the center of the screen. Once that loads Repartition the drive as One partition and then reinstall Lion.

Unable to boot from my USB Flash Memory Device

Hi there,
I recently purchased a macbook pro with the lion 10.7.2 firmware.
I am experiencing problems with my USB Flash memory as when i plug it in it comes up fine on the desktop and i can browse it. The problem is that when i open up an application such as Adobe Fireworks or Netbeans (Java programming) and try and access files from my USB flash drive, my drive does not appear on the list/menu, it only comes up with my macbook pro documents etc.
I have asked friends with Mac's and they tell me they do not experience this problem. Please can you help me whether it is a problem with my settings or any other issues.
Thank you.

Nope, I dont recieve any massages at all. It just doesnt appear.
Also usually you can drag a file into an application, for example drag an image into photoshop in order to open that image up but this does not work either.

How to download pictures fm i-photo to USB flash drive and/or to a cd

How can a person download pictures from i-photo to a USB flash drive
and/or to a cd with the purpose being to share the photos with another
group using a laptop computer to control and project images to a screen.
I can't find instructions anywhere in apple help. Please keep it simple.
Thanks.
LAS (Learning Apple Stuff)

Select the pics in the iPhoto Window and go File -> Export and export them to a Folder on the desktop. Then drag that folder to the USB drive / or burn it to CD with the Finder's Burn command.
Regards
TD

I have a MacBook pro late 2011 version it's not booting up so I am trying to boot from a USB recovery drive but when I select it nothing happens it jus goes to the restore options

I have a MacBook pro late 2011 version it's not booting up so I am trying to boot from a USB recovery drive but when I select it nothing happens it jus goes to the restore options

Bahamaguy wrote:
I have a MacBook pro late 2011 version it's not booting up ....
So what you want is to be able to boot from OS X and retrieve your files
Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive
Of course if it's not booting up, it's easier to fix in place
..Step by Step to fix your Mac
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents#/
...so I am trying to boot from a USB recovery drive but when I select it nothing happens it just goes to the restore options
"Recovery HD" is a partition on your boot drive which you option or commnad r key held at boot time to get into and then repair the Macintish HD partition.
If you have this on a external USB thumb drive, then that's all it is, no OS X, programs or files.
If your talking a USB external drive, it has to be a OS X bootable clone made with Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper and the option key held at boot time gives you that boot option.
Most commonly used backup methods
So what your saying is you have a external clone and by holding the option key down at boot all you get is it directly going to Recovery HD?
There is no Startup Manager option to choose what to boot from?
This could mean Apple changed something, or your external bootable clone isn't one, or the wrong software used so it's not being recognized by Startup Manager as a bootable option.
What did you use to make the external OS X USB bootable drive?

Why can't I edit the photos I just imported from a usb flash drive?

Why Can't I edit the photos I just imported from a usb flash drive? I scanned them into a desktop pc, copied them onto a flash drive, imported them into iphoto. Once I remove the flash drive I'm unable to edit them. Says it can't find the original...or something like that. I appreciate any help you can give me! Trying to get a slide show ready for a funeral, therefore I have an approaching deadline, eek!

Copy the photos from the drive to your desktop import then again and delete the images. If the same mistake appears, there is something wrong with your import settings into iPhoto - > may be you didn't imported the original files to your iphoto library.

Booting from a USB Flash Drive and Optimizing Performance

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