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DriveDroid?
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Or if you have an Android phone with the appropriate kernel patch, Drivedroid.
Edit: ~~Oh and a chipset capable of USB host mode.~~ Edit2: I'm getting confused with the poor Nexus 4 users.
I really dig drivedroid which emulates USB CD-ROM/USB HDD for PC, so PC can boot from disk images stored on the phone.
This week I successfully installed ubuntu from the ISO on the phone.
My only problem is that without OI explorer it lacks UI to choose path for images, so I had to type something like "/storage/4ace-030e/Download/images" to images path manually so it started using SD card and not internal storage. (I didn't find how to copy full folder path from terminal emulator or fx file explorer)
DriveDroid is awesome. One device that can select which live image to boot on a target machine. Carry an installer, a recovery suite, and a pentesting suite in your pocket.
Very handy to have a couple of bootable rescue images - I have Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) and Parted Magic. You can even have Kali but it's rather large.
I've got 1 app that is split into a paid one and a free/ad-supported one on Google play:
The free version has around 75000 active installs. The paid version 6000.
It generates €300-400 per month from people paying for the app and around €100 per month from ads. It is a bit hard to compare it to other apps, as it does require root for it to function. Additionally, for most people it is only for one time usage (when their OS broke down). Lastly, the paid version doesn't have much advantages (yet?), so there is still little incentive for most people to buy. At least, that's my reasoning.
I have posted it on /r/Android once and it got picked up by some larger blogs and people reposted it on other related subreddits. That was a few years ago. Nowadays most people find it through Google play when their OS has broken down and they need a way to fix it using their phone.
Most of my time has gone into device compatibility. Not having a stable API to work against costs quite a lot of work, especially if you do not own every problematic device in the world.
If you have a rooted Android phone, check out drivedroid. You can load all your ISOs into your phone and then pick the one you want from the app menu. The app then emulates a bootable USB drive with that ISO.
Do you have an Android device? If so, you could try this app.
Download Tails on there, boot from that, then install it onto the USB drive of your choice.
It's free with the option of a paid version.
Note: I'm not the Dev; I just really like this app and think more people should know about it. It's saved my ass many-a-time!
Does it register in Bios as a Internal/SATA cdrom? It seems like it would be an external/USB cdrom.
I do a similar thing with my phone, a 128GB microSD, and drivedroid
Well, this is not certainly a solution but it could be a workaround. There's an Android app called DriveDroid that enables you to boot your computer from iso files in your phone. Since I discovered it I just store a number of iso files in my phone and never really used a USB stick ever since. You can choose to make your phone look like a USB stick or a CD drive and the CD drive option usually works great with UEFI machines.
I use drive droid (the paid version let's you add your own repos) because it's easy, but there are a number of tutorials for installing live iso's on your android phone on the internet.
You can get #1 using DroidDrive Works on any rooted phone. I have tried it one everything from HTC to Samsung & Moto.
DriveDroid is how I did it. Make sure you're rooted and your kernel supports it though.
I know I am, but I'm aware of it. I was driven there by my friend who is an unaware Apple fanboy...
He bought a fucking black turtle neck.. when he found out that i was assigned a Macbook at work, you would think he were an evangelical christian who thought their son was gay but brought home Shania Twain herself. It's hard not to shoot off to the other side like a ball bearing in a railgun with that kind of thing going on.
Besides... Drivedroid, USB ports, SDcards, removable batteries... Oh god the removable batteries.. i went through 5 batteries in my HTC Vivid before i upgraded to the Samsung Galaxy S5.
I've resorted to DriveDroid on my phone. Gives my ability to carry around multiple images without having to format USB every time I want a different distribution.
If you have an older version of Android (older than 3.x), you might get it to work. It's a possibility you may brick your phone because you know, a lot of system files are stored on your phone's flash memory.
Honestly though, it seems like it'd be easier to use something like DriveDroid.
>...use the internal storage for isos and essentially have them presented as a boot disc to another computer.
Are you thinking of DriveDroid? It is incredibly useful if you need to unfuck something you did and don't have a working backup machine.
There are some Android apps (DriveDroid) that claim to let you use your phone as an external drive and boot from it, but it only worked on my laptop when I tried it, not my desktop. You could also order a USB stick online for less than the price of a takeaway lunch. ;)
What blew my mind when if first found it is that you can use your Android to provide a bootable image to the PC with this. When I made a fresh install on my dad's PC I hadn't have any storage devices at all with me and this really helped me out.
If you currently have no way of accessing other computer you could use this to install your os directly from a rooted android device.
If you have Android check out DriveDroid which lets you boot from an ISO on your phone. If you want them on one USB check out this.
There is an andorid app that does something similar, it's called Drive Droid, I keep all my ISO files on my nas and just download the specific one to my phone when I need to use it and just boot using my phone. takes a few mins.
There is a way - if you have rooted android phone, you can always use DriveDroid. I've confirmed it works - installed linux myself on few different pc's
Avantaje: poti instala aplicatii care au nevoie de root pentru a functiona (DriveDroid e un exemplu bun, permite instalarea sistemelor de operare pe PC folosind fisiere iso din telefon), poti face overclock, poti repartitiona memoria interna, poti reconfigura mai usor permisiile aplicatiilor si, cel mai important poate, poti decoda telefonul mai usor. Dezavantaje: procedeul de root-are poate duce la pierderea garantiei si poate brick-ui telefonul (poti corupe bootloaderul si nu mai poti sa pornesti telefonul, poti pierde date (contacte, poze etc) daca nu faci un backup in prealabil, te poti trezi cu tot felul de situatii neprevazute (telefonul pierde semnalul aiurea, nu-ti mai recunoaste cartela SIM, nu vede reteaua etc...)
edit
inca un avantaj: poti activa suportul OTG la unele telefoane
Proxmox has had various issues in the past that I've run into and it's not really supported, from what I remember.
There was some severe issues with the installer itself and I don't believe it was meant to be put on a USB to install from.
Luckily I have a zalman USB ISO mounter that works pretty well with this type of stuff. It's a Virtual CD rom and you just select the ISO and boot to ZALMAN Virutal CD ROM device.
OR
If you're an android user, you could try Drive Droid which basically takes your android phone and makes it a Virtual CD/DVD ROM just like the Zalman does. I have not tried installing Proxmox this way but I don't see why it wouldn't be worth a shot. You do need root and it may or may not work with your phone. My last 2 phones, One X and OnePlusOne work just fine with no issues:
I used to need root for this... apparently he's gone into the play store. You can use your phone to store iso files to boot from. FANTASTIC if you want to carry around a 3' cable.
Get yourself a copy of a boot repair disk and let it run its magic.
You can download it onto your phone and use drive droid or similar to boot your machine using the phone as a live disk.
Turns your phone into a virtual usb cdrom, presenting whatever ISOs you have on your phone to the server as a cd it can read / boot from. Rescue disks, disk wipe tools, diagnostics, etc...
Several similar tools, so if you're an iPhone guy or want different feature set, there's plenty to choose from.
I'm not sure this is what you're looking for, but there is an app called DriveDroid. It requires root, though.
I do a ton of stuff with my phone but one thing I do that I don't think most people do is use it to run live OS and/or install OS on computers.
I have also used USB-OTG to charge bluetooth headphones before :D
Without a doubt:
Among one of the reasons I stick with an Android device and say not an iOS or Windows Phone.
You can install from USB with a thumb drive or an Android device. LAN is another option for many motherboards.
You can install it through USB, CD, LAN, even mobile devices. Windows 10 requires a minimum 16GB of storage for installation, but the installer package itself will fit on a smaller drive. Your BIOS will ask for, or auto detect a boot drive and the installation process will walk you through the rest.
Android itself takes up almost 10GB nowadays, doesn't it?
A few gigs of apps
Every game could potentially take up a few gigs by itself
Several GBs of music
I keep a bunch of Linux LiveCDs on my device so I can boot any computer using one of my favorite apps, DriveDroid. Not just Linux, actually. I have an Acronis ISO on there to make backups at any time, and a Windows installer.
I'm rooted, so I have at least one Nandroid backup at any time, which is the size of the Android system image itself (compressed, so a bit smaller).
I'm well over the 32GB mark when you add this all up. I need either 16/32GB + SD card slot, or 64GB internal. Preferably 32GB internal even with an SD card, as the system image and apps need to be on internal storage. The music, ISOs, and nandroids can go on the SD card.
Just for the future, there is a way to turn your (android) phone into a bootable stick. (if rooted). This app
Also, HDMI to VGA, aren't those like super expensive?
There's not really many options for you without access to another PC. The only option I can think of is setting up a rooted android phone as a bootable Ubuntu liveCD and making a USB via Windows 10 ISO and dd (disk dump) command, or seeing if you can boot directly from the Windows 10 ISO from your rooted android phone. Here's a link to the playstore app which lets you do so. If you also don't have a rooted android phone, you may end up having to buy a USB CD/DVD burner to try at the library. Or see if someone will ship you a Windows 10 bootable USB drive (which would require you to input your own product key during install), but that is of course risky with all the viruses and malware floating around. Hope any of this helps!
If you have access to another computer, use a tool like Etcher to burn a linux ISO to USB, plug USB into laptop and reboot. Then click on your chosen distros installer icon.
If you don't have access to a computer but do have access to a rooted android phone, you can use the DriveDroid app to boot ISOs on your laptop from Android.
You got my hopes up for a second, until I read that it requires root.
So I can't use it on my Galaxy S9+ Snapdragon (yet).
I'm guessing it supports the same formats as the S/X. Are MP3, (non-DRM) AAC, FLAC, AIFF, WAV, WMA all supported?
Its perfectly possible and doable, despite what some people keep repeating here like a broken record without doing any research first.
1st
Your phone must be rooted
2nd
You need a "DriveDroid" app [link]
It allows you to mount ISO/IMG and other disk images as a boot partitions inside your phone. All you do is copy an *.ISO file of what you want to boot (Windows for example) into specific folder on your phone (configured inside DriveDroid app) and thats it.
This allows you to boot, for example Windows installation image from your phone via USB connected to PC in both legacy and UEFI mode
Tested personally by me, I've been booting MemTest, UBCD, DBAN, Windows 10, Windows 7 installers this way without need to constantly format whole pendrives.
I could swap between images with just one click on phone.
Just wanna mention that this (booting Linux from your phone on any computer) is already possible with DriveDroid. I've used it several times to install Arch Linux and boot gparted live and it's easier than using a flash drive. I highly recommend joining the beta on the play store.
If you have a rooted android phone, DriveDroid actually supports this and a few other nice things. It can present itself as a cd-rom, RO USB image, or RW USB image
Read through the comments. If you have an Android device that you're willing to root, Drive Droid allows your phone to be a mountable USB drive. Windows 7 DL assuming you have a key. DL it right to your device and follow the instructions with the app.
Edit: Also works for Linux/Live/Repair Discs.
I just learned recently that you can store bootable Linux images on your phone. So you plug your phone into a computer and you can boot up your desktop environment. Apps like DriveDroid work great for this.
Sadly, it requires an Android device, and root privileges. Nonetheless, the app is called DriveDroid ^(Link to Google Play Store).
Actually, there is one other way, if you have an Android phone with 6+ GB free space, you can root it and install this app.
You have the same issue I do:
Drivedroid has been a lifesaver, put it up with a fast SD Card and you're golden.
If anyone wants something similar to what Casey mentions at 1:51 (boot a computer OS from your phone) then you can do it on a rooted android phone with DriveDroid. It's very easy to setup and even just has buttons in the app which will just download the latest version of a specific linux distro.
If you own a rooted android phone check out drivedroid.
Pretty amazing.
Also don't forget that you can use android usb thethering with linux without needing extra drivers or anything, and you can enable wifi to just use your phones (or tablets) wifi instead of mobile data, effectively making the phone a usb wifi module. This is great when you need extra drivers to use your ethernet or wifi on the target computer.
Thinking about it I've never tried combining these two so that might not work.
If you have an Android device, you can use DriveDroid to make a mountable USB you can boot from. I've done this plenty of times with a whole bunch of distros, even installed Windows a few times from it.
Not sure if this will help, but if i'm not mistaken drivedroid ( [link] ) works on some non-rooted phones. That would allow you to virtually mount a recovery ISO and use the phone as virtual CD-drive. I'd assume you could use that to get the surface to boot onto the recovery image without the need of formating your SD-card (Which is not possible from non rooted phones afaik)
Not sure if this will help, but if i'm not mistaken drivedroid ( [link] ) works on some non-rooted phones. That would allow you to virtually mount a recovery ISO and use the phone as virtual CD-drive. I'd assume you could use that to get the surface to boot onto the recovery image without the need of formating your SD-card (Which is not possible from non rooted phones afaik)
rooted Android phone with DriveDroid. (tutorial)
USB to microSD adapter with >=8MB and <=4GB drive microSD card.
Thank you all for your responses! What did work after all was changing the USB device (stick) that was attached - I plugged in my Android tablet and used DriveDroid app to serve my PixelBook the recovery image. I bet just switching to another USB stick would have worked too (after some experimentation with different sticks), but I didn't have any at hand.
does your ssd work in any ways or is it dead dead dead? if the ssd works and you just killed your windows, try this: install "drive droid" on your android, boot your computer with ubuntu via drive droid. install "chntpw" and read the windows serial key.
You can download the iso easily enough using your android device.
The hard part is creating a bootable usb installation drive without another PC. It is (allegedly) possible to boot to linux from an android device, and then copy contents of iso to fat32 formatted drive, but that is a lot of effort.
Another solution may be to use Drivedroid which allows you to boot from an iso on a pc but that requires phone to be rooted.
It really is much easier to create a bootable usb drive from windows on another PC. Can you not get a friend to create one and post you a flash drive?
That's true. It'd be cool if it worked like that, but I doubt it does.
For example, most USB flash drives, or even external USB hard drives, Just Work out of the box. There's even a standard there, called USB Mass Storage. So when you plug your phone in and can browse the filesystem, that's what's going on, right?
Wrong. At least on Android, what it's doing is probably MTP or PTP, originally designed for transferring photos -- they operate at a much higher level, kind of like FTP. It is possible to use mass storage instead, I suspect, but not while the device is on -- then you'd have two OSes accessing the same hard drive at the same time, which is incredibly tricky and rare and usually requires specialized filesystems -- definitely not something that would work out of the box.
That said, it could work. There are things like DriveDroid which prove Android can fake USB-mass-storage, so there's no reason it couldn't fake a network card. Maybe it could even be fast enough. There are other, similarly-crazy ideas like the EyeFi, which pretends to be a FAT-formatted USB mass storage device, but actually uploads your photos over wifi instead.
I'm just guessing that it's not like that at all, and that what's actually happening is some sort of IP over USB. And I'm not sure there's a standard way to do IP-over-USB.
...or, really, what I'm saying is that whenever the solution is "Pretend to be a completely different piece of hardware," it's usually more complicated than that. For one thing, 4G is not the same as wifi, so if the computer thinks it's talking to a wifi adapter, there may be some extra differences that have to be translated, which might make the endeavor as insane as the EyeFi seems. (I still find it amazing that the EyeFi works at all.)
...but I'm really just guessing. Maybe you know more than I do.
I have DriveDroid on my Phone which does require root but it makes your Phone a bootable drive for a computer. So things like Hiren or the Ubuntu installation are on it for me to use as troubleshooting tools.
Drivedroid works, but needs root. Just connect your phone with a usb cable and it will work like a bootable usb stick. Booting from SD would need support by the laptop's BIOS, so might not even work if properly prepared.
Install gentoo.
Memes aside, you should try creating a bootable windows usb or burn a DVD of the version you are using and using the repair option if you get the chance to use another PC or your desktop if it doesn't work. If you can't do that but have an android phone and root on it, you can use DriveDroid to download ubuntu or the like and using it to boot up your PC (once it starts choose to try it before installing) and either using WoeUSB to create a bootable USB or burning a DVD
I think you misunderstood me. The Beagleboard black has a usb slave port which allows it to basically be a usb hard drive.
So you would have a USB hard drive plugged into the BeagleBoard Black which would store all the images of the hard drives or whatever and the beagleboard would connect to the TV, etc.
This can also be done in android though most Android devices tend to only have 1 USB port so you would only be limited to your on board storage/microSD.
Though thinking about it now, it might be possible to host it on a network share, but obviously you'd be limited by your Wi-Fi which can be pretty slow.
I was thinking about putting together something like this for my WiiU which requires the entire drive to be formatted and doesn't support partition, but I figured a 2 TB portable hard drive costed as much as the beagleboard anyways.
Combining this with a browser where you could download the Windows ISO from a Live CD could be immensely useful for people. Especially those who do not have a PC at hand to burn their USB/CD.
I work on DriveDroid where it already allows people to rescue their PC, but installing Windows right then and there would be a next step.
Also if you have an android device with root you can use this [link] which turns your Android device into a temp boot drive.
DriveDroid ([link])
It's brilliantly simple.
Edit: Oh, my bad. It needs root access. Don't know if this would be possible without.
I was stuck with on the same problem as urs.
Download this and install Linux mint and install it and then try creating a windows bootable usb
If you have a fairly new Android phone with a semi-large SD card, you should check out DriveDroid. I find it pretty useful.
I have an Ubuntu ISO, an Arch ISO, and a Windows 10 ISO on my SD card and use it for emergency purposes.
droiddrive
if your pc or laptop goes on the blink you can d/l linux or any recovery iso and boot your pc from your android and fix it this app is a life saver
Do you have root on the phone? If so, you can make the phone itself a bootable USB drive, using the excellent DriveDroid.
I thought of that, and it doesn't work.
I actually implemented something like this, but automatic. I rooted my old Android phone and installed DriveDroid, mounted my fileserver over sshfs and exposed images from there. I was about to switch to something more efficient, like iSCSI.
Here's the problem: It doesn't work. See point 1 in my rant -- not even disk images work. Apparently, the data in the external drive is tied to both the console and the drive. I'm not sure if it's by serial number or USB ID or what, but at least one person noticed that when he moved the exact same drive to a different USB enclosure, it stopped working until he moved it back to the original enclosure.
So at best, you'd need to buy exactly the same model of hard drive if your old one failed. And that might not even work.
Apparently, you can transfer your stuff over to a new console, and then just plug the USB drive into the new console -- but you need the old console to do that. Nintendo says that if you don't have your old console, you should contact support. They don't say whether they can actually make your external drive work. (Does anyone know?) So even if block-level backups do work, the console itself is a single point of failure.
I'm tempted to buy or borrow a couple of cheap USB sticks to make sure this doesn't work, but it really does seem hopeless.
If you have a rooted Android phone and a micro USB cable, you can use DriveDroid.
/u/FriendKiller96
/u/ncef
If you have a rooted android phone, DriveDroid does the same thing.
And if you don't have a flash drive, you can use DriveDroid to boot directly from your android phone.
y-you guys are using usb flash drives for installing Linux distros?
Check out DriveDroid. It lets you create a temporary bootable disk from an image.
You can download Linux ISOs right in the app, and boot your PC from your phone!
Directly downloading Win 8/10 is impossible with only 2GB storage. I would download a smallish Linux liveboot distro with network card support, boot the PC using DriveDroid, then download Windows 10 from there and create the installer. Remember the free upgrade period has ended, so if you haven't upgraded in this PC before, you need to pay for valid license
I'm not who you replied to, but I'm betting it's DriveDroid
I have something similar without the extra device to carry, but it requires rooting your phone - DriveDroid
If your phone is rooted, you can try DriveDroid to boot an ISO directly off your device
Maybe DriveDroid?
I have not, but if the goal is to have bootable media you might want to check out Drive Droid.
I wouldn't want to go without root because DriveDroid uses it to emulate USB and CD drives from ISO files.
Nobody mentioned [link] ?!
Flash drives? That's so 2010. [link]
Or reboot from a linux ISO on android.
This is the app used to do that.
The latter. Something along the lines of this: [link]
I've used this, works.
Easy2Boot is indeed really good.
As an alternative if you have an Android device you could use DriveDroid
If you have an Android phone use DriveDroid
Not sure if you can get Windows working from it, but look up DriveDroid it's always worked for me
EDIT [link]
If you own an android phone, look into DriveDroid - it lets you use your phone as bootable USB.
Sadly, in my experience, it doesn't work for a lot of phones.
DriveDroid - Allows you to host ISO/IMG files from a compatable device/kernel.
[link]
Diode - A reddit client. Only mentioning because it's the one I use.
[link]
LinConnect - Mirrors notifications on a Linux desktop.
[link]
AFWall+ - Allow which apps you want to access the newtwork(s).
[link]
F-Droid - A free and open source Android app repository.
[link]
PPSSPP - A PSP emulator.
[link]
XMouse - Remote mouse and keyboard for Linux: utilizes ssh and xdotool.
[link]
Edit: Added more apps, also formatting.
Happy to offer what help I can.
You don't happen to have a rooted android phone do you? [link]
It actually works [link]
Use DriveDroid
Haven't tried it yet but there's this app for android.
Is your phone rooted? [link]
drivedroid. Needs root.
Drivedroid, i highly recommend you buy the paid version if you install Linux a lot.
not what you're looking for, but probably will achieve what you're trying to do, have a look at drivedroid
I think you can.
You can do that with your android phone as well: [link] Cheers
If it's supported by this app you can use your phone: [link]
Ai android? Daca da, joaca-te cu asta [link]
DriveDroid is really useful.
There is always this too:
I don't remebmer if you need root for this [link] , but good app.
Or just use Drive Droid if you own an Android device.
Here's an app for that.
I do something similar but on my phone. That way I can just download the latest ISO and boot it from one device.
> Tem como eu instalar o windows nesse HD sem formatá-lo?
Sim, basta criar uma partição no espaço livre do HD e instalar nessa partição.
> E outra: é possível que eu coloque o windows no meu celular e instale o windows por ele no USB?
Sim, há uma forma usando o aplicativo DriveDroid seguindo este tutorial: http://www.geekomad.com/2013/08/how-to-make-android-phone-as-bootable.html
Com ele é possível fazer seu celular funcionar como um pen drive instalador do Windows.
Mas não recomendo, sugiro que use um pen drive pra isso pois é mais seguro.
Install USB Mountr. Open, click unmount. Alternatively, you can specify your own .img file, mount it and use it as a secondary usb drive.
If USB Mountr doesn't work, check out DriveDroid. Unfortunately DriveDroid hasn't been updated for a while, so you might want to opt for the Beta version first.
If neither of the applications work, you might need a custom kernel that supports DriveDroid. Check out the forum for your device on XDA forums and see if there are any custom kernels available for your device.
If you have root - This is quite cool
[link]
Sorry for your loss.
I'm in socal if that can work for you. The easiest fix is NOT reinstalling Windows at this point because the files may get overwritten. What you need to do is get a bootable USB with Linux on it. If you have another computer, you can download this, load it onto a flash drive, and pull the files, or upload it to Google drive, email it to yourself, etc.
What this does it runs an OS like Windows, called Ubuntu off the flash drive without touching your hard drive with Windows installed and the files you want. You can then access the corrupted hard drive from the Ubuntu session and backup the files.
If you do not have another computer, but have a rooted Android phone, you can use the app DriveDroid which can emulate the USB flash drive on your phone.
Since you say the windows 10 USB will not boot, chances are the BIOS/EFI is not set to boot from a USB device. The BIOS is what controls what gets booted. On most Dell computers, it is fairly simple to get into the BIOS to change this setting. Also, some computers have a specific port labeled "BOOT" on the USB port. The computer will only boot from that one. When the computer is turned off, insert the flash drive into the boot port if you have one, otherwise insert it into any port, then start spamming the F12 button. If the keyboard has Fn keys by default, it is generally not required to press the Fn button. So while spamming the f12 button, turn on the computer, while continuing to spam. It should either bring a menu with a list of boot devices, or a setup utility. If it brings a menu, choose USB and you will be on your way. If it brings a setup utility, navigate to the section on boot order, and move USB device to the top of the list, then hit save and reboot.
If you need more assistance I'm sure many redditors are willing to help.
I use DriveDroid for this (Android & rooted only): [link]
I guess both have their advantages/disadvantages.
I've forgotten the name of it. But there is a portable USB HDD that can be used to boot ISOs that are stored on it, all I can remember about it at the moment is that it has some kind of tiny LCD screen as well. Hopefully someone else can name it.
EDIT: Seems to be made by iodd.
There's also an android app (DriveDroid) that works in a similar way.
Personally I use netboot and just PXE boot it on machines.
In the past I've played around with tools like YUMI and multiboot with various degrees of success. It was just a hassle to keep all the ISOs up to date.
It's possible with Android!
If you have an android phone you can use DriveDroid
As soon as power comes on watch for a prompt to press Esc, Del, or F2 to enter BIOS. If you don't see one, press them all repeatedly anyway. You'll probably need a thumb-drive with an OS, or failing that a disc. Ubuntu is particularly well documented. If you're in a hurry or lacking components you can use DriveDroid and install something like Tiny Core, which will run entirely from memory rather than storage.
I saw that exact blog, and I was looking for it again -- thanks. I'm still not ruling out some other issue there, something like a broken enclosure.
> (This does leave one to wonder if using the same enclosure but different drives might work).
Yeah, but that doesn't help you if something goes wrong with the enclosure.
I mean, I had something like that already, basically -- I took my old Android phone, rooted it, and used this app to export a disk image, which I had mounted via sshfs from my desktop. So I could've used any physical storage I wanted in that desktop, I could've taken snapshots, or done incremental rsyncs to somewhere outside my apartment...
I figured, in the worst case, I can always get an actual physical hard drive of about that size, and write the disk image out to that, right?
But then I read that blog, and I figured even if the entire crazy contraption I built still worked in five or ten years, if I so much as have to replace that phone, it might all fall apart.
So that's why I keep asking whether someone has actually tried copying the data, in case that's different somehow, or just to confirm that it's not just this guy
As for why they might do it:
> I just found it hard to believe that somebody at Nintendo said "Oh, gee, we don't want them to go copying this data for any reason!..."
Yeah, it seems a bit stupidly controlling, even for a console. But I can imagine a few ways this might happen where they weren't deliberately locking down this one use case.
For example, they might've done this before they settled on the idea of locking content down to that one system -- maybe the original design was that you couldn't copy data, you could only move it, but you could plug any external drive into anyone's console.
Or, maybe this logic was originally written for dealing with discs and the optical drive. In that case, a different optical drive might mean one that's more tolerant of burned discs, say. So you'd write some code that says "If anything about the hardware looks different, assume shenanigans."
But even in the best case, all this does is move the needle back from "evil" towards "incompetent". I still can't back up my games in any reasonable way. Cloud saves are still a broken promise. Even the "Copy from one hard drive to another" flow is actually an improvement, delivered in a patch! (At launch, you could only plug one USB storage device in at a time.)
Yes, getting or borrowing a dvd or flashdrive would probably be much easier but easy is not fun, right?
- If you also have another PC or a good router with some attached storage you can use pxe boot to install over the network. This is kinda common for large deployments.
- If you have access to another windows installation (e.g. a short VM install using the same iso and a trial key) you can follow these or these directions.
- You can use a complete harddrive as the backing device for a virtual machine and install as usual. Since the installer is only written to that drive this can not interfere with your usual bootloader and you would either have to update grub at some point to find this install or press some f button when booting. However, while this works just fine with linux, windows will probably bluescreen due to hardware changes, so you would first have to figure out all relevant drivers while in the VM and maybe how to fix the bootloader.
- If you have a rooted android phone drivedroid might work for that.
Of course one should make backups before trying any of this and in general.
This app is the SHIT.
You can use DriveDroid and a glorious rooted Android device, yes.
You can make your phone behave like a USB key - [link]
This. If, however, you can't use PXE because you're in the field a lot, look at DriveDroid: [link]
Actually I just found this app allows you to boot from your android phone using ISO files but it requires root. [link]
Got an Android phone? See this [link]
= I haven't tried it myself though, maybe someone has and can give us his/her input?
> Plus most of the vulnabilities come from apps...
There are plenty of vulnerabilities that come from the OS, enough that Google is shipping monthly security patches.
> Not having a secure bootloader is a minor downside since that is usefull only if you store critical data there and your phone is stolen.
That's a good point. How do you know whether you store critical data there? How wouldn't you -- it has access to your Google account, doesn't it? Or, to put it in the style of John Oliver's interview of Edward Snowden, would you want anyone who stole your phone to be able to get at your dick pics?
My motivation here is a bit different. I work at a company that uses Android for Work, which is nice -- I can carry only one phone, instead of needing a separate work phone, but my personal stuff stays mostly separated, and my employer pays my phone bill. But they're obviously not going to let me have confidential corp stuff on my phone if it's rooted. So I have yet another frustrating choice: Either I don't get root on my own devices, or I have to carry two phones.
> Android pay isn't something that even works in my country.
Fair enough. And there are countries where Netflix and the like don't work either. But there's a lot of stuff that works in my country, and requires an unrooted OS, which makes this a frustrating choice for me.
> Anyway i see your point that phone companies like every single fucking company in the fucking world just wants to milk every cent from every wallet in the galaxy.
That's not even my point. I'd happily give them more money for a phone that sucked less than the above options. It would be a shut-up-and-take-my-money, $1500 impulse buy if there was actually a phone that:
- Ran a close-to-AOSP Android
- Had top-of-the-line hardware, at least for phones (like, say, 4-8 gigs of RAM)
- Was committed to at least 5 years of OS updates and security patches, just like ChromeOS devices
- Came in phablet and Nexus-5-ish sizes
- Had a camera that doesn't suck
- Internal storage rivaling modern laptops (128G at least) -- not even so much for me, but so people stop bitching about the lack of a MicroSD slot
- At least one MicroSD slot anyway
- Either dual SIMs or Google Fi support, for international travel. (Preferably both, so people can choose how to handle this, and just in case you end up in a place without Fi.)
- A screen that goes as close to the edge as you can get without warping like an edge -- either give me hardware buttons Samsung-style, or use that space for more screen real-estate, or make the phone shorter.
- A battery that lasts roughly twice as long as batteries do today, even if it means the phone is a little thicker. (Over five years, battery life will decrease quite a lot, so...)
- Wireless charging and usb-C
- A goddamned 3.5mm jack
- An IR beamer to turn on my TV
- Supported something like DriveDroid without actually requiring me to root the phone -- okay, this is dreaming (especially with "close to AOSP", but I'm not going to get the other items on this list, so I may as well dream
I haven't looked in awhile, but the last time I did, things didn't look good -- the better the hardware, the more likely the manufacturer was to want to put their own spin on the UI to stand out from the crowd. The closer to stock, the worse the hardware, and sometimes (as we saw with the Nexus 5X) the worse the drivers.
If your phone is rooted, try this app:
Download it on your phone and you can install straight from your phone.