USB thumb drive

I have a Thinkpad T43 2687 DDU and I am able to boot from my old PNY Attaché one Gig thumb drive but when I try to boot from my new 8 Gig Kingston drive, no luck. It tells me that I have a corrupt drive and I should reboot. If I take the same Kingston 8 Gig drive to my desktop, I have no problem and It boots up nicely. I used Acronis backup software to create my Boot-up thumb drive, what am I missing?

See the first paragraph of IBM T43 Laptop USB Persistent Install over at the Ubuntu Forums. It might be helpful.
Don

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Prepare an usb thumb drive, to boot windows 7 or 8 in UEFI mode

Purpose of this post:
Prepare an usb thumb drive, to boot windows 7 in UEFI mode and install the system in pure UEFI mode.
Why am I writing this:
I had a hard time finding out how to make a custom installation of windows 7 in pure UEFI mode, and avoid using the factory restore disks. After hours of research, experiments etc I finally got the point and found a solution. And I'm happy to share my research with you. I hope this will be of help. If something is not clear, or more information is needed, I will be glad to explain things further.
History:
As most of you already know, BIOS was developed for PC in early eighties and has remained unchanged in recent years. But, since 2000, Intel started working on a new firmware interface, called Extensible Firmware Interface, abbreviated EFI. And since 2005 United EFI Forum has been handling the responsibility for development, management and promotion of UEFI specifications. Bigger companies like Intel, AMD, Microsoft and Dell have already started to bring out their products in accordance to UEFI standards which has more stable, secure and easier to use interface.
How does UEFI works (in a nutshell):
Once you power on the UEFI based PC, the Pre-EFI is executed which initializes only the CPU, memory and the chipset. This followed by Driver Execution Environment (DEX) where other hardware is initialized.
Advantages of UEFI:
    It can integrate various drivers this will not require to load during booting so saves time.
   PC can connect to network without OS.
   Also integrated drivers allow rendering GUI based control panel which out dates the old school bluish BIOS screen.
   Not all the installed hard drives are scanned as boot drive is set during the installation of OS in UFFI.
   Applications like anti-virus and diagnostic tools can be stored on virtually any non-volatile storage devices attached to a PC.
For a system to boot and install in UEFI the partition table of the HDD should be GPT (GUID Partition Table), not the old school MBR (master boot record). GPT has many advantages, can have virtually an unlimited number of partitions (windows will allow only 128) and impressively big partitions.
Since UEFI has a lot of advantages why not having a system install and boot in UEFI mode? AFAIK new Lenovo notebooks/netbooks are UEFI capable and OS’s are already installed in pure UEFI mode.
So, let’s go now to the point. Do you want to have more control over your HDD? Let say, you have a 320GB HDD and you have divided it in two partitions, one of 50GB, for your Windows 7, and the remaining for your data. If something goes wrong and you need to restore your system to factory default, with the recovery disks, it will wipe your partition scheme, set the system to default and this way your data will be lost.
You may want to make a “vanilla” installation of windows from a USB thumb drive and avoid using factory recovery disks. Now here things get complicated. A standard preparation of the USB with Microsoft’s software (Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool), or other tools, will give you a bios installation, not a UEFI one. So for the system to boot, you will need to change some settings in bios, and changing it from UEFI to legacy bios. The installation will prepare the HDD in MBR partition table, and you will lose all the advantages of UEFI, described above.
Now this can be avoided, by properly preparing an USB to boot and install in UEFI mode. Here are the steps:
Step by step tutorial:
1.   In a windows computer, download a legal copy (although trial) of the windows 7 os. You can do this from here: http://www.mydigitallife.info/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-from-digital-river/
Be sure to download the same version that came preinstalled in your computer. For example, if you have a Lenovo x120e, with a Windows 7 professional, 64bit, download an iso image of the Windows 7 professional 64bit.
2.   Once downloaded burn the iso to a USB thumb (at least 4GB) using Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool.
3.   After preparing this, create a folder on your computer, name it whatever (i.e. W7pro64bit). Go to the root of your USB
and select all the files and folders there (9 in total) copy, and paste to your folder you created, W7pro64bit.
4.   Using windows format the usb again in FAT32. Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool, formats it in NTFS. We need a FAT32 formatted disk to achieve our goal. Formating again the USB in FAT32 will not touch the MBR of the USB thumbdrive. And after copying back the files (see step 6) the USB will still be bootable. (nice, and simple, isn't it?)
5.   Now go to the folder W7pro64bit and do the following:
a.   Browse to W7pro64bit\sources\ and open install.wim file. It’s a big file, and can be opened as an archive with 7zip (free software). Do not extract it, do not modify it, just browse the file with 7zip. Just to be sure you do not mess with that file, you can copy it somewhere else in your computer, and than procede.
b.   Browse this file (install.wim) to \1\Windows\Boot\EFI\ and locate the file bootmgfw.efi. Do not move, delete it, but just drag that file to the desktop. (if you have copied the file install.wim to another place in your computer, than you are safely do whatever you want with that file ) Close the 7zip program to release the install.wim file.
c.   Rename the file you just copied to the desktop from bootmgfw.efi to bootx64.efi.
d.   Now go back to w7pro64bit folder and browse \efi\Microsoft. Form there copy the folder boot and paste it one level up, on the folder: \efi. It will look like this: \efi\boot.
e.   Now copy the file you saved on your desktop and renamed (bootx64.efi) to \efi\boot (inside the boot folder you copied on step 5d
6.   Now go to the root of the folder W7pro64bit and select all folders and files (9 in total) copy, and paste all those files back to your USB thumb drive. (see step 4 for more info)
7.   Go to the computer that you are going to reinstall, and before restarting it, use the program ABR (activation backup and restore) to backup the license of your windows os. (use google to find ABR). Advanced Tokens Manager (ATM ) is great too. This link may be of help: Backup and restore W7 activation. After the program finishes its magic, it will create a few files inside the folder where the program itself reside. Copy these files to a new folder in your usb. Rename it to ABR so you will quickly find it later. (if you decide to use ATM, the procedure may be a little different. But you are smart enough to figure out how to use it)
8.   Backup to an external storage all your data before continuing.(reminder: are you sure you saved the license as explained in step 7, to a safe place? To a external drive, to another computer? If you are sure, than go on with step 9)
9.   Now restart your laptop, and enter your bios settings. Go to the boot settings, and set the computer to boot in UEFI only. Not both, not UEFI first, or legacy, BUT UEFI only. Save and restart.
10.   Press f12 (or the corresponding key for your machine) to choose the boot device and chose to start from the USB thumb drive with your windows 7 pro 64 bit.
11.   If everything is done correctly, your computer will boot from the USB.
12.   Follow the wizard and choose a custom install, not upgrade. At the disk partition window delete all the partition you see there until you have only one unallocated space.
13.   Select it, and click next to install windows, without making partition in this point. The installer will create a GPT partition table not a MBR since the USB booted in UEFI mode.
14.   Immediately after the first restart remove your USB thumb, and the installation will continue from the HDD. Wait until installation finishes.
15.   When you will be finally on your desktop, on the installed OS plug your USB go to the ABR folder and click on restore.exe. It will restore your license and your copy of windows will be activated.
16.   Now you can go in computer management/disk management and shrink the HDD to create your partitioning scheme. Make sure to leave enough space to your windows os. (30gb or more for extra programs you will install at your choice)
17.      Download from lenovo.com thinkvantage system update and update your system. Windows update too can install all the necessary drivers, if you need only basic drivers support.
Note: if tvsu will fail to work, see this:
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkVantage-Technologies/ThinkVantage-System-Update-Servers-down-the-wh...
It may look a looong tutorial, but once you do this for the first time, it will look a piece of cake.
Final words:
From now on, you can install windows 7 in UEFI mode with your special USB without changing your partition scheme anymore. If you have a data partition beside your os partition (see the example above), when you reinstall the system using your USB thumb drive, at the disk partition window chose the partition where windows is installed, delete it, and reinstall windows to the unformatted area. Your partition with your data will be intact and the installation will automatically mount your data partition to the system. And, all the scope of this procedure, you will always have a pure UEFI installation of the system, with all its benefits.
Have fun!
abvasili
Moderator note: changed subject to match new content. Was: Prepare an usb thumb drive, to boot windows 7 in UEFI mode
I'm just a volunteer. I like to help others where I can. Do my ideas work? I hope so. o_O
Who helped you today? Do not forget to thank him.
My hardware: TP x120e 0596-2ru. Windows 7, sp1, 64Bit, English, installed in UEFI mode.

seanare wrote:
Thank you, as I noted here, your post was the key to my getting a Windows 8 SecureBooting setup on a W530.
In the case of Windows 8, I needed to copy the files away, reformat my USB key as FAT32 and copy the files back, and viola I was able to boot from my USB install media with the BIOS set to only boot UEFI. From there, there rest was easy (for Windows 8, the copying and renaming is not necessary, the key is having a FAT32 partition on the USB media, rather than an NTFS one; the EFI files are already in the right location).
Thank you again good sir.
You are welcome... and I'm happy that the change of the file system helps with windows 8 too. Thanks for confirming that.
abvasili
I'm just a volunteer. I like to help others where I can. Do my ideas work? I hope so. o_O
Who helped you today? Do not forget to thank him.
My hardware: TP x120e 0596-2ru. Windows 7, sp1, 64Bit, English, installed in UEFI mode.

I need a way to get usb thumb-drive securely recognized as a apple keyboard

I posted this question over at Developer Discussions also, just to get more eyes on it, not to be disruptive.
So, I would like to utilize a maximum-length Admin. password (255 characters?) without having to manually type it in each time I login, install/update software, or for any other reason. The perfect situation would be some type of script or software installation onto a USB pen drive (2 gig sony)which is inserted into the macbook (via usb) when the Leopard Login screen appears. It logs me in, then, afterwards, it creates a clickable icon on the desktop that achieves the same goal (entering a long admin password securely). And all of the above is achieved using the built-in security of Keychain access, without having to continuously mount and unmount the drive.
Searching google produces many expensive products that do not fit: Securikey, omnikey, smart cards, tokends, and on and on. They seem to have figured this out at microsoft - not that it matters much, except that it appears to be possible.
One problem is that a USB thumb drive is not mounted until after login, it seems, but, I plugged in a friend's usb apple keyboard from the year 2000 and was able to type in my password at login. And, an email reply elsewhere suggested writing a daemon (that constantly runs in the background of the operating system) that could recognize the drive and accept a script from it that inputs the password and executes the 'enter' command.
I don't know how to write daemons yet, but I can stumble around a bit with bash and applescripts, and I can copy any Xcode project out of a book and make it run properly. I'm a beginner.
This project might create security issues for my operating system, but I'm really not concerned about that because this is a computer I don't rely on and can safely perform experiments on. And I would like to use this as an opportunity to learn - so I'm going to give it a whirl anyway - unless someone has already accomplished something similar. In that case, why reinvent the wheel and plug it into the wall, eh?
Basically I am asking for help. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

You don't need to get deep into programming to do much of this.
launchd, the background process that's responsible for launching most of the background processes on your machine, has the ability to launch a script based on disk mount events.
StartOnMount <boolean>
This optional key causes the job to be started every time a filesystem is
mounted.
So you could create a LaunchDaemon script that watches for a disk mount. When a disk is inserted your script is fired off. You'd need to perform some verification to ensure the disk is, indeed, your USB stick and not some other device, then it can trigger the rest of the login process. Off hand I'd look to osascript to run an AppleScript-based keystroke, but there may be other ways, too.
One big question relates to securing your password. Clearly you can't store it in the script, so you'd have to read it from somewhere. You also can't store it on the USB stick unless you somehow encrypt it (otherwise someone can just look at the files on the USB stick and get your password), but AppleScript can use the keychain, too, although I'm not sure what keys would be available prior to login, so it requires some experimentation.

Can I use a usb thumb drive for Time Machine?

Can I use a usb thumb drive for Time Machine backups?

Hello,
Yes you can use a (large) thumb drive. The most common format for a Time Machine backup drive is Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
Hope this will help.

Using USB thumb drive with Parallels and Microsoft Windows XP

I installed Parallels 3.0 because I need to use a few windows applications for work. I am currently unable to find the USB thumb drive when I plug it into the USB port. It is connected and is selected, but I can't figure out how to access it. I check in "My Computer" just like I would on a PC, but the thumb drive is not listed. Any suggestions.
Macbook with Leopard
Thanks.
Jon

You're right, it should show up under My Computer. You may want to post your question over on the Parallels forums: http://forums.parallels.com as they're more geared toward the issue since Parallels is not an Apple product.

Using a usb thumb drive with a mac

So, I'm a recent windows user and when using a USB thumb drive, if you erased something, it would automatically update the thumb drive and show the right amount of free space.
I've noticed with the mac, if you delete an item, it doesn't update, and you need to go into disk utility and format in order to show the appropriate amount of free space.
Is there an easier way to do this?
I searched for a few minutes on this topic, but couldn't seem to find anything. All apologies if I missed it.

Choose Empty Trash from the Finder menu, or from the menu which appears when you control-click or click and hold on the Trash icon in the Dock.
(38516)

How can I create a Lion USB Thumb Drive with the 11E2068 build?

It seems that the Lion build from the Mac App Store is not compatible with my Macbook Pro Retina 15''. It's seems I would need the the build 11E2068 for my USB thumb drive to work properly.
I don't want to go through the internet recovery and loose 8 hours.
Is there anyway for my to get that build(11E2068) on my USB thumb drive?
Thanks,

keg55's given you article that allows you to capture the installer. These are the critical portions:
Once that data has been downloaded, Lion Recovery restarts your Mac, immediately installs the OS, and then deletes the installer data. The trick is to interrupt that process—safely—so you can grab the installer data and keep it. Here are the steps to take:
IMO, Apple needs to rethink this process. Unless users with machines that had Lion preinstalled, like yourself, let Apple know this process is terrible, they'll not change their minds.
7. IMPORTANT: Monitor the download’s progress. As the progress bar gets near the end, get ready, because once the status reads About 0 seconds remaining, the progress bar will disappear, the installer will spend a minute or two cleaning up, and then your Mac will restart. As soon as the screen goes dark, unplug your external drive. If you wait too long, your Mac will boot into the Mac OS X installer on that drive, starting the installation process. Interrupting that process can leave your Mac unable to install OS X unless you restart it and—I’m not joking—zap PRAM.

How to dual boot from usb thumb drive in lenovo x1 carbon

How can I boot Lenovo x1 carbon 2014 from an USB thumb drive? It has Windows 8.1. And I have tried disabling secure boot in bios setting. And set usb drive to boot order 1. But that still does not work.

I use the
Windows USB/DVD Download Tool too to create the usb thumb drive. And I use the tool to copy the iso file there.
And when I use that drive on an older laptop runs windows 7. it works.

USB thumb drive crashes MBP and PowerBook G4

Hi!
I have a USB thumb drive. It mounts on the Desktop (as two drives, which is not strange because it has both an internal 6 MB of memory and a 2GB SD card) and I can open them. But if I attempt to copy a file either to or from the drive, the Finder hangs forever.
This problem exists both on a shiny new MacBook Pro with 10.4.7, and a PowerBook G4 with 10.3---in either case, I must hard-reboot the machine.
DiskUtility says that the drive checks out OK.
Any thoughts? I tried reformatting the thumb drive, which worked temporarily; but when I added a file to the drive on another machine and tried to transfer it to the Mac, the thing hangs Finder again.
I don't have any problems with the drive on PCs, and I don't have the problem with other USB drives on the Mac.
Xcott

It sounds like the file system is corrupt. I am assuming it's FAT32. I would reformat the drive partitions on a Windows machine and see if that helps.
Also, because it's a dual, you might want to make certain that you do not plug it into a hub or a keyboard but directly into your Mac's USB host port. It may need additional power...
Good Luck!

USB Thumb Drive Size for Windows 7 Professional Image

I have a ThinkPad X100e running Windows 7 Professional 32-bit. Can someone please tell me what the smallest size USB thumb drive I can use to create the installation/recovery image from the hidden partition using Rescue and Recovery? I cannot seem to find that information in the Help menu or in the online FAQs or Knowledgebase.
Thanks in advance for your assistance!

it makes 3 DVDs so maybe 15 GB
Thinkpad R61 7733-1GU
Thinkpad X61T 7762-54U
Thinkpad X60T 6363-4GU
Did a member help you today? Thank them with a Kudo!
If a post answers your question, please mark it as an "Accepted Solution"!
Regards,
GMAC

How do I install Lion onto a USB thumb drive or SD card

Hi, folks..
I'm not asking about how to create a Lion installation thumb drive or SD card, or copy the recovery partition to a USB drive or SD card. I already have a backup Lion install thumb drive. What I am hoping to do is create a bootable Lion thumb drive or SD card on which I can also have Drive Genius and other utilities -- so I can boot from the thumb drive or SD card and work on my unmouted nternal hard drive.
Is it as simple as installing Lion onto the thumb drive or SD card, or is there more to it than that?
I've tried searching for this, but everything I've found has been about creating an install SD or thumb drive.
Thanks in advance!

Okay, so I ran the Lion Install app and directed it to install onto my USB thumb drive. Everything looked like it was doing what I wanted, and since the screen showed that it would take about 17 minutes I stepped away for about a half-hour. When I came back my screen was off, and when I pressed a key the progress bar said it would take another 11 minutes. Huh? I went away again for another half-hour, and when I returned the progress bar hadn't moved -- still 11 minutes.
Okay, I was working on a USB drive, no big thing. No keypresses did anything, so I hit the power button on my Mcbook Pro, shut the sytem down, then started it back up. It booted to a screen to setup Lion. Hmmm.... I shut the system down (this time from the Apple menu), pulled the USB thumb drive, powered back up, and ended up at the same place.
I rebooted, this time holding the Alt key, and saw that my Macintosh HD had been renamed to something about install. Booting from that partition gave me no option but to complete a Lion installation.
Thankfully I have a Time Machine backup, and the recovery partition worked, so my system is back up (although some of my preferences seem to have changed, even though my backup was current -- another "huh?").
So, what did I do wrong?

POSSIBLE? Copy USB thumb drive image to file and rebuild it to use the USB drive ?

I bought an 8GB USB thumb drive and used it to create an install boot disk to boot for install or use disk utility to clone my system drive for failsafe. In other words it is called "Install OS X Mavericks" and I can boot from it.
SO, it just sits there and does nothing while I am not using it, and in the meantime I have some documents I need to get printed at Kinkos and class notes to carry around, and this drive could really be useful to do that, rather than waste time and money to buy a new one and keep track of them all. You know how these things always get lost of broken and you end up with a few of them and never know what's on them?
So ... in UNIX style I tried to do a dd of the drive "dd if=/dev/disk2 of=$HOME/usbdrive.dmg bs=4096" - assuming a 4K block size would work.
The system does not seem to recognize it, so I'm doubting if that was the correct way to do this, or if this can be done at all.
What I want to do in short is to not bother with formating or anything like that, and just create a disk image that I can store around until I need to put it in my USB drive to boot for an install, rebuilt, clone system drive, etc.
Can this be done, and does anyone know how to do it?
I do have Mavericks Server, but I'm not sure how or if the System Image Utility will do this? It sees the drive, but it just give me options to make a Net Boot Image, NetInstall Image, or a NetRestore Image ... and I do not know if any of those options will allow me to put it back on the drive when and if I need to?

The command you want is
sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app --nointeraction
This command only works if "Install OS X Mavericks" is in the Applications folder and a 8GB usb is erased and named "Untitled". Change the command as you see fit.

Can I use a USB thumb drive with iPad

Can I use a USB thumb drive with iPad2

What do you want to do with the thumb drive?
If for picture/movie files, You can use a USB flash drive & the camera connection kit.
Plug the USB flash drive into your computer & create a new folder titled DCIM. Then put your movie/photo files into the folder. The files must have a filename with exactly 8 characters long (no spaces) plus the file extension (i.e., my-movie.mov).
Now plug the flash drive into the iPad using the camera connection kit. Open the Photos app, the movie/photo files should appear & you can import.
 Cheers, Tom

How to recover old OS X installation on the ssd after installing a beta OS X on a usb thumb drive?

I just installed the brand new OS X 10.10 Yosemite beta 2 on a USB thumb drive.
It almost works.
Now I want to boot my good old OS X 10.9 Mavericks from the SSD.
But there is no option for that, if I reboot the macbook holding the opt key!
I see only "Install OS", "Recover 10.9" and "OS X Yosemite", if I plug in the thumb drive.
But if I boot the OS X 10.10 beta 2 from the thumb drive, I can browser my SSD "Macintosh HD", see all the folders and files, it's still there!
If I choose "Recover 10.9", it says, I can re-install the OS X or recover my Mac from the time machine or ask for help online, what I'm actually doing.
How can I make the SSD bootable again, without re-installing the OS X and losing my data? Yes, there is still an option to restore from the time machine, but it's too long, I need my computer now.
It's a rMBP 15" early 2013.
Thanks

Found it: in the disk utility menu select start volume.
Thanks.

A USB thumb drive with data created in Windows is not showing up on my desktop. Do I need a different driver or something?

A USB thumb drive with data created in Windows is not showing up on my desktop. Do I need a different driver or something?

OK in order to read those files you will need MS Office for Mac or install MS Windows on your Mac. You can get MS Office for Mac from anyone that sells Apple products. I would suggest the Apple Store, Best Buy, Amazon etc...For help getting the data from the memory stick I'd recommend visiting your local Apple Store or AASP and they can help you move it. It should be as simple as plugging the USB drive into your USB port and then open a Finder Window where you will see the drive on the left pane. If you don't know what Finder is or how to open a new Finder window you need the sites I've noted below!!!
Because you are new to OS X I would strongly recommend you bookmark and frequently visit the following web sites:
Switch 101
Mac 101
Find Out How Video tutorials

I have a new USB thumb drive that works in my 2010 iMac but not in my 2012 MacBook Pro

Today I purchased an 'autodrive' usb thumbdrive at Staples. The drive works fine on my mid 2010 iMac, and my Asus Netbook running Windows 7. However, it is not recognized at all by System Information or Disk Utility on my mid 2012 Macbook Pro. Both Macs are running Mountain Lion 10.8.2.
If I connect my 2 year old SanDisk USB thumb drive to the same USB port on my Macbook Pro, it is immediately recognized and a finder window opens. The SanDisk drive is also recognized properly by the iMac and the Netbook.
Is there any way to further debug this issue to get a better idea of why the device is not being recognized by the Macbook Pro?
Thanks,
-Scott

I am having this exact same problem with my New MBP 15" quad core 2.6GHz i7 on 10.8.2. I have other thumb drives that work, but an older thumb drive that works on my prior MBP 15" 2.7GHz dual core i7 on 10.7 and XP and Windows 8 laptops isn't recognized at all by the newer MBP. This thumbdrive is only 256MB and may be USB 1, but USB 1 stuff should work on a USB3 interface unless it's a bug. I've freshly formatted the drive and tested it with disk utility on the older MBP, so it's an issue with the newer Mac's USB controller or MacOS 10.8.2
I suspect a bug.

USB thumb drive

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