I have a number of thumb drives. I've noticed (from new) they can be quite different and I'm curious. I have hidden files showing and compared them all in Computer Management. (XP Pro) I have an old 4GB toshiba that's never been used as a boot drive. One day I forgot to remove it and when I booted the computer I got this: Attempting Boot From USB device Disk error Press any key to restart - Pressing any key just gives me the same message. Removing the drive and pressing a key just starts windows as normal. None of my other drives do this. Some of them are boot drives. Why is it some of them have a small unallocated space (9MB) and others dont? Are some drives automatically bootable from the factory? Can all thumbdrives be made bootable?
No. Few years back I tried to make a bootable thumb drive and it wouldn't boot. The stick was Sandisk Cruzer 8gig. Turns out that at some point Sandisk, for whatever reason, made a batch of them unbootable. Learned on the Acronis forum that if the Type of drive is Local Disk it won't boot. If the Type is USB drive, it will.
Thanks guys. Where do I see that? My Computer shows Local for the C drive and the thumb drives show as removable. In CM they just show as Disk 0 Disk 1 and so on. Does bootable, depend on something in the firmware?
