USB memory stick question

[Martin Cigorraga]

On 04/22/2014 03:05 AM, Phil wrote:
> Thank you for reading this.
>
> I have an old Toshiba A100 laptop that will boot from and old Panram 
> 256 MB USB stick, no problem so far.
>
> I bought a Verbatim 8 GB USB stick today and the A100 laptop will not 
> boot from it. Same .iso file copied to both sticks with Unetbootin and 
> both formatted to FAT 32 with GParted.
>
> The Verbatim USB stick is readable in the A100 laptop but it will not 
> boot from it.
>
> Can anyone suggest why the newer USB stick will not allow the A100 to 
> boot? Better still, how can I solve the problem? Surely the size of 
> the USB stick is not the problem?
>
> I need to fix a Grub problem with boot-repair and the A100 does not 
> have a working CD drive. The older USB stick contains the boot loader 
> so I can't copy boot-repair to it.
>

AFAIK you can just simple dd Ubuntu .iso straight:
1. Plug you USB as usual
2. Unmount it from CLI, not from Nautilus: $ sudo umount 
/media/YOUR_USER_NAME/PENDRIVE_NAME.
Usually it goes like (in my case): $ sudo umount /media/msx/pendrive
Note that when at a CLI you can use the TAB key to autocomplete commands.
3. Make sure your pendrive is formatted to VFAT for better 
compatibility: $ sudo mkfs.vfat YOUR_PENDRIVE -I , usually /dev/sdb on 
most laptops and desktop systems.
To be extra sure usr $ lsblk to list all your block devices. -I will 
instruct mkfs to format the whole pendrive instead just a partition.
4. Transfer the .iso to the pendrive: $ sudo dd if=NAME_OF_ISO_FILE 
of=/dev/sdb (or whatever your system points the pendrive to)
5. Reboot. This should work with every *buntu .iso, at least it does 
work here.