How to boot USB drives

Brent — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:06:57 +0000

Trust me on this, everyone. Learning how to boot USB drives from your start-up menu is not too difficult if you have a little bit of basic knowledge about BIOS and its startup options on your laptop. If you know even just that much, you’ll stick with this just fine, so don’t worry! Learning how to boot from USB just takes a little bit of time and patience if you’ve never done it before. This is the same technique you’d use if you ever wanted to say, boot from a CD, a specific hard drive, or something like a floppy disk drive (do they still have those??). All you need to do when you start up your laptop is watch the first screen carefully. I’ll cover that in juts a moment.

First of all, why w0uld you want to ever do this? Booting from a USB drive isn’t just something you’d do every day, unless somehow you actually had an operating system loaded up on it (TinyXP anyone?). No, doing this procedure is typically used if you’re having issues with your normal operating system and need to perform a “rescue,” also known as a recovery. Most of the time your recovery tools are going to be located in a CD or DVD given to you by your laptop manufacturer, but not always. Cheaper laptops generally come with a “recovery partition” (this is common with Compaq products), usually located on a separate partition from the C: drive. For example, my recovery partition on the laptop I’m sitting on right now is actually located on the D: drive, even though I only have one physical hard drive installed into this computer. The D: drive is just a simple partition created with software to keep the recovery data away from my main computer data.

Anyway, when you start your computer, you’ll usually see an option in the lower left corner telling you to use an “F” (”function”) key to boot into BIOS instead. BIOS is going to help you boot a USB drive by allowing you to change the boot order of different peripherals. Generally it’ll be in the order of: DVD/CD drive, then hard drive, then any other drive. This default setting is to allow you to boot a rescue CD first, but since we’re not going to do that today, we need to simply change it so the USB drive boots first. There should be on-screen instructions as to how to actually change the USB boot sequence using your keyboard. Once that’s done, simply save the settings, pop in your USB drive, and restart.

When you boot back up, your USB drive will be booted first, allowing you to use your rescue tools. Voila!

Shopping:

SanDisk Cruzer 16 GB Cruzer USB 2.0 Flash Drive SDCZ36-016G-A11

Engraved Wooden USB Flash Drive 8 GB with chain - Engraved name Boots

UNITECH 1550-900009GA PLASTIC BOOT,PA600,USB TYPE A HOST TO DEVICE CABLE NOTES

Kingston DataTraveler I - 4 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive DTI/4GB

USB Type B Connector

Choosing a great laptop accessory

Brent — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:58:51 +0000

If you had to pick a laptop accessory to make your computer stand out, what would you pick? There is a vast array of accessories you can choose from in order to customize your system to meet your needs. In this article, I’ll go through some of the accessories you might consider adding.

Are you using your laptop accessory to enhance gaming? Then you should check out a dedicated gaming mouse. Gaming mice mostly come as USB 2.0 peripherals; this fast bus speed allows for less lag time and greater sensitivity, which is best for games which require fast reflexes (such as first person shooters). You can choose wired or wireless mice to suit your needs as necessary. If you really want to get fancy with an accessory, your computer mouse can even come with interchangeable grips to really provide an individualized experience. Along those same lines, you might also look at a gaming keyboard; these often have programmable buttons and other functions to enhance your gaming experience.

Another laptop accessory you might want to look into is the USB flash drive. This is the modern-day version of the infamous floppy disk (remember those?), but actually allows more than 1.44 MB of storage! Some of the best flash drives come with literally gigabytes worth of storage. These solid state drives are only size limited by your wallet. If you need to have your data portable wherever you go, you can’t beat the convenience factor.

How about accessory bags? How can you carry all of your laptop gear around with you without having all of it break? Depending on your tastes you can find whole loads of great cases online, such as at coolcomputerbags.com, or other such sites. If you’re a female and want to carry around your laptop in a stylish way, you can buy a case that looks like a purse. If you’re a guy who just wants to look good, there are many cases that meet those needs as well.

This post is only a small sample of some of the great things you can buy for your computer. Stay tuned, and we’ll discuss more ways to personalize your system and find the laptop accessory you want.

Shopping:

Case Logic VNC-17 17-inch Value Slimline Laptop Case (Black)

Razer Deathadder 3500 High Precision 3.5G Infrared Gaming Mouse

Saitek Eclipse Backlit Keyboard - Red LED ( PZ30AUR )

San Diego Chargers Pro Grip Mouse

HP v100w 8 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive P-FD8GBHP100-EF

The Refurbished Laptops Guide » USB flash drive

How to boot USB drives

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Choosing a great laptop accessory

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