How do I make a bootable SD card?

IceDigger

IceDigger

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Feb 22, 2001
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Just curious if it is possible to make a computer boot from an SD card like a floppy or cdrom drive.
 
machwireless said:
i think its possible but you would need a good size SD card
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Why? Floppy disks are quite small but one can still boot from them.
 
well I would think that depends on ur OS. but i havent seen a computer boot from a floppy since Fred and Wilma got shoes so you might be right.

My Treo boots SD and my digi cam but never tried a PC.
 
People boot from floppies all the time for bios updates and such. It really isn't all that uncommon.
 
machwireless said:
well I would think that depends on ur OS. but i havent seen a computer boot from a floppy since Fred and Wilma got shoes so you might be right.
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Uh... I had to use a floppy last month to get my latest BIOS update....

... But (if I remember correctly) if your BIOS supports booting from removable drives, you just copy the boot files from a floppy to your SD card. (But I think that works only with USB flash drives... I'll find out tonight....)
 
tiraides said:
... But (if I remember correctly) if your BIOS supports booting from removable drives, you just copy the boot files from a floppy to your SD card. (But I think that works only with USB flash drives... I'll find out tonight....)
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I was wrong...


hungryduck said:
I believe this is the sort of thing you're looking for:
http://www.weethet.nl/english/hardware_bootfromusbstick.php
happy booting.
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... but the website works....

I formatted a USB flash drive and an SD card using the instructions from the site... I was able to access the flash drive (using the USB FDD setting in my BIOS) but not the SD card. I'll reformat the SD card later and try again....
 
I tried again but was unable to make the SD card bootable. Then again, I was using my 7-in-1 internal card reader/floppy combo drive... maybe it might work if you used an external card reader.

... But that was a fun experiment; I ended up with a USB "boot" drive! :D
 
tiraides said:
I tried again but was unable to make the SD card bootable. Then again, I was using my 7-in-1 internal card reader/floppy combo drive... maybe it might work if you used an external card reader.

... But that was a fun experiment; I ended up with a USB "boot" drive! :D
Click to expand...

I've never had any luck getting any of my multiformat card readers to boot any sort of flash media. My USB key worked on the first try, but not the 3 readers I tried. Tried CF and SD in all three readers. What's really annoying though is the fact that I can read the data on the cards in the multiformat readers after I boot from a floppy or my USB key. So I can read the cards just fine in DOS. But I can't boot from them. I really need to look into this some more, it would be really nice to be able to boot from the internal reader using an old 8MB CF card.

I've noticed a few places were people mention that using something like USB-ZIP or USB-HDD might work. I'll have to try that.
 
^^^ I tried all of the options available (USB FDD, USB CDROM, and USB ZIP/120) in my BIOS, but was unable to make my SD card work in any of them.
 
im thinkin an SD card acts like a slave drive in that it can store information for use but cannot be made bootable.

if you have any luck, post.
 
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