Weird problem with USB boot.

Question

I have an OptiPlex GX270 with a strange problem... Booting from USB FlashDrive works fine. Booting from USB floppydrive works fine. But Booting from USB external CD-romdrive does not work at all. I have tested the cd-rom on computers with internal cd-romdrive and that works like a charm. The cd-romdrive (CD-RW to be exact) is an ASUS CRW-5224A-U which works fine in winXP and Win2k. The settings in BIOS should be OK since both usb 'thumb-drive' (don't remember what name) and usb floppy works (sony) Anyone have anything that might help?

speedstep · Answer

i suspect that a USB hard drive enclosure would also work. Sounds like the bios doesnt support some or all CDRW drives because they are UDF and not ATAPI. OR that particular drive does not support
el torito iso 9660 images.

Marsupio · Answer

SpeedStep: Thank you for your answer! I have come to that conclusion my self, and I am now searching for a cd-rom that will boot from USB. Do you have any suggestions? /Marsu

SideKick13 · Answer

I am having the same luck with USB Hard Drive support. I have a need to store confidential data in a secure invironment. This requires me to lock up hard drive or secure computer. I was thinking an external USB 2.0 hard drive would solve my problem, however, this OptiPlex GX270 does not allow for boot up to USB devices. I have tried everything and all it will do is start to boot into Windows 2000 and Blue Screen and says "Inaccessible_Boot_Device".

Does anyone have a solution for this problem?

Thanks,

SideKick13

automan1945 · Answer

I think I might have 2 possible solution to your problem, one just use the original HD for running the OS.

Second I have been able to boot to my 20G ext HD, but the utility I used will only let me use about 2G of it because it forces me to use FAT32.

The utility is HP Drivekey. you can download it from their website. It is meant for HP USB devices but it will work with quite a few other usb devices. I used 2 different devices and it worked. I just wish I could get it use the whole drive.

Any advice?

Thanks

Automan1945

THOSPI · Answer

German DELL support gave me the following answer : ... bei GX270 ist diese Option leider noch nicht vorhanden. Das booten Ã¼ber CDROM oder Floppy an der USB Schnittstelle wird erst ab dem GX280 unterstÃ¼tzt...   Translated : this option is not available with GX270, model GX280 will be enabled to use USB-boot from floppies or CDROM drives.

Storage, Drives & Media

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