uhh.. k den.

Though personally I'll stick to doing stuff rather than waste time NOT applying Occam's Razor. There are just better ways to waste time in life. Involving Linux as well.

PS not hungry enough it seems to stop the Black Continent from being the ever main contributor to world population growth

I've read through all of the new posts (admittedly skimming some things for lack of time available), and I'll make a full reply later today when I have the time, but here are a few things to keep in mind:

I don't have any SSD, and I use only HDD.

I realized that my USB stick is USB 2.0 (I think, but it doesn't say on it), so I'm going to get some 3.0 ones today and see if that works better.

My biggest problem is NOT the fact that GRUB keeps being corrupted and needs to be reinstalled. That's only a very minor annoyance by comparison. By biggest problem by far is the fact that once I fix the corrupted GRUB on the HD, the USB stick no longer boots, no matter what I do! So it becomes completely unusable, unless the GRUB on the HD gets corrupted again, at which point, I'm then able to boot from the GRUB on the USB stick to recover the GRUB on the HD, which then makes the GRUB and Linux on the USB stuck once again unbootable!

And my other huge problem is that I can't seem to access my HD or other USB ports once I'm running Linux on a USB stick. As for the slowness, I think and hope that will be solved by using USB 3.0 sticks.

Ok so that's your firmware.. in short, find the manual, there's nothing you can do about it in Linux. Understood. Let's wait till you have time to diagnose it further.

Ensure the HDD is mounted. To do it on GUI open start menu -> acessories -> disks

Alright, so now I have time to reply to everyone:

I'll check those, thanks.

There's a cache on these things? Why would erasing a block be slower than writing data to fill it? Isn't erasing the same as just writing 0 everywhere, and if so then why doesn't it do that instead if it's quicker?

Well I guess when I format it I could say to use the smallest block/sector/whatever size available, though I don't remember it giving me the option in the Mint installer or even in GParted. When you say I'll have to erase eventually, what do you mean? Are you referring to the fact that it's "erasing" whenever it writes a file, like you said above, or do you mean because I'll have to manually erase files at some point? That doesn't really worry me, because I plan to install and configure everything how I want and then make it read-only after that, so there won't be any erasing in the long run. I just need it quick enough that I'll be able to set everything up initially.

Mint, once installed seems to be about 6.5 GB, though the installer is about 1.8 GB. Porteus is only about 300 MB for the installer but I'm not sure of the size after it's installed. In any case, it only took me a few seconds to install Porteus (though I couldn't boot from it, but I'm not sure whether that's because of an error in the installation or just a difficulty booting from USB drives in general), whereas Mint took hours to install the 6.5 GB, so it's still not a comparably similar speed.

Yeah, I guess I could try something like that, but I'll see how the USB 3.0 ones work before I bother with that, since it may become a moot point. I should be able to get 3.0 this afternoon.

I don't see how there's any way it could possibly be because of the vesa or anything related to the GeForce. Like I said before, I'm using Linux on my HD right at this very moment, and it's set up with those same parameters, and it runs great! Also, when I had experimentally tried to install Linux on a USB the previous time (which actually was 3.0 as it turns out), though I was never able to get it to boot properly after the initial time and in exceptional cases (when the GRUB on the HD was corrupted), I had the video drivers and settings the same way then as well, and I wasn't noticing a slow-down at all. So how could that be the cause?

Well that makes sense, but I'm not sure I follow the lines that you printed after it. They looked like a bunch of nearly identical lines except for a slightly different number after it said "SATA", and I don't know where you got the idea that 2 and 4 are the primary ones, nor am I entirely sure what you even mean by that in this context (I don't know a whole lot about hardware, to be honest, because I'm a programmer and I deal mostly with pure software).

In any case, when I type dmesg I get a HUGE and incredibly long list of all kinds of different stuff (like maybe over 100 pages!).

If I remember correctly, I think that when I looked in the dev folder I didn't find any disks, nor when when to the directory represented by the computer icon (I don't think its the root, but something similar - I think they may just call it "~", but I'm not sure). In any case, I doubt it was mounted, because usually it appears on the left side whether it's mounted or not, and then I can mount it if I want, but this time it wasn't even there, so it was missing to an extent even greater than if it was just unmounted.

Well here's what doesn't make sense to me about this theory. First of all, why would something be missing from the kernel if I used the exact same installer that I used every time I've installed Linux before, including the one that I'm using right now, and I don't have a problem at all on this one? And for that matter, how could there be a hardware problem (like with the hard drive, or for that matter, every USB stick that I plug in), for the same reason, considering that all of those things work when I'm booted into Mint on my HD? I'm not trying to argue, but I just want to understand your reasoning because it seems to contradict the evidence, though I may be overlooking some different circumstance or something.

And I don't see how I can possibly get my hands on an oscilloscope, let alone figure out how to use it to do what I need to do here, but I doubt that would be necessary, anyway.

Right, I was referring to the fact that every single time I install Mint onto a USB drive, it always automatically corrupts the GRUB which is already on the HD, and then I have to manually reinstall GRUB directly, in order to fix it. This happens regardless of whether I specify within the installer to place GRUB on the HD or on the USB.

To be continued...

My understanding is that the way flash memory works is something like this (someone correct me if I'm wrong):
* You can't write to the memory if you don't erase it first (either that, or you can change bits in only one direction).
* Flash memory, when erased, actually has a bit pattern of all 1's, not all 0's, so writing all 0's to it would actually be the opposite of erasing it.

Edit: Just checked Wikipedia, and it turns out that, indeed, 1's can be changed to 0's without erasing the whole block, but doing the reverse isn't possible without erasing it.

However, I've read that there's an option to run it with -b I think (I wrote it down so I'd double check if I was planning to try it), and that will install Linux without placing GRUB anywhere! That might possibly prevent the corruption problem, but here's a VERY IMPORTANT question, because it might possibly solve my problem: if I were to install Linux onto a USB drive without any GRUB at all, would that then hypothetically:

- be able to boot in either BIOS or UEFI mode for any computer that can boot from USB

- be limited to one particular mode

- never be able to boot at all

- be able to boot only in a computer that already has GRUB installed on its HD

Which of these do you think is accurate? My theory is that it might possibly be the first option but couldn't be the second option, because if there's no extra partition with the BIOS or UEFI data then it's not specifying which one to use, so it should either work in both or neither, since it's not being preferential in any way. It might possibly be the third option, but on the other hand, a lot of people have only one OS installed on their computer and it boots just fine without any boot loader or other extra stuff at all (as far as I can tell), so it seems like it should boot just because there'd be nothing to get in the way, referring back to the first option - does that make sense? Or the fourth option might be the case, because if Linux requires GRUB (or another boot loader) to boot, and if GRUB is on the HD already then it should be possible to recognize and boot the USB drive that way, even if the USB drive doesn't have GRUB, but then if it's placed into a computer without GRUB, it may not recognize the USB to boot - but on the other hand it might simply because Linux is on it, so it's back to option 1.

HOWEVER, keep in mind that as much as I always have problems booting from USB drives, I can ALWAYS boot from the installer drive and run live mode! Does the installer have a boot loader? It seems to have GRUB, or some version of it, but the options on it are very different (like Compatibility Mode). So I really don't know why that always seems to work but the ones that I create just don't.

And to reply to your next post:

I'll look into that also, thanks for the tip. I hope I can just use a boot menu, because that would probably be the most convenient way.

Well, like I said, that's the least of my worries, because it won't help me boot from the USB, and I don't see how I can prevent Mint from botching it up unless I use the option to disable it from installing GRUB (which may possibly still botch it up anyway). I don't see how I could unplug the HD, considering that I need to reboot directly from Windows to get to the installer, so I'd have to open up and unscrew the HD while the computer's still running! Though if I can get the boot menu to work then that would be an option, but honestly it's less trouble to just reinstall GRUB after it's corrupted.

Oh, so that was supposed to be that way after all? That's good to know, because I had considered trying it the next time without the 1 MB padding, thinking that it may work better that way, but I guess not. So the MBR, GPT and legacy boot loader all fit into 1 MB? Actually, the legacy boot loader I guess is the 2 MB BIOS partition that I created as the first one, but the other stuff is within the first MB which was offset as padding? I'm just trying to understand all of the details, because hopefully that will enable me to do this correctly.

Well even when I was running in BIOS mode I don't think that the display or card had anything to do with the slow-down, because the mouse cursor could still move around fluidly, and when I did certain things, like move windows around, they happened pretty much instantly, with visual results, but most things were just slow.
I'm not sure where to even find the rating. I'm lucky I could even find the USB version of these things. I get them from a store that has huge troughs of them, not in a box or any packaging. Each trough has ones of a different color, and each color represents a different size and USB version number. They're very cheap, but like I said, historically I've always had very good results with the USB 3.0 ones, so I'll be really happy this afternoon when I get more of those.

I really only need small ones (even 8 GB would be fine) and they have to be cheap, because I plan to use a bunch of them to make numerous duplicates. They have "Made in Taiwan" written on them.

That was everything substantial up to that point. After that:

clarry, I'll have to look at the manual next to see what could possibly be wrong with my firmware, but this is a very new and great computer, so I don't see why there'd be anything wrong with it.

Dark_art_, thanks for the tip about checking the disks - I'll try that the next time I try to install it, if I get the same problem again.

dtgreene, then it could be written with all 1 instead of 0, but either way, if it's quicker than erasing then it should just do it that way. I still don't see why it's quicker though. As for changing 1 to 0 but not being able to do the reverse... that's weird. I guess it explains why 1 is considered the erased state, but still, they have these things set up oddly.

Flash is written in bits, but erased in large blocks.


I just check in on this thread occasionally, to see how the saga is unfolding, so forgive me if you've already answered this:

When you installed Mint to your USB stick, did you just do a normal install, like you'd do to a regular HDD/SDD?
That's not a good idea, as things like /var/log may put a strain (both in performance and wear and tear) on slow devices like cheap USB sticks.

Distros meant for USB sticks will do things like writing file system changes to RAM and only (optionally) persist them to the USB drive on shutdown.

Well I don't know how normal the install was, but I used the "something else" method to specify stuff. Lately I've been trying to use something referred to as a "hybrid" install, whereby I have 3 partitions - one for BIOS, one for UEFI and one for Linux Mint (to ensure maximum compatibility in all modes). I'm still having huge problems though, as I've explained above.

But concerning wear and tear, I tried using Porteus instead, and seemed to install it, but couldn't boot from it, though I don't know whether that's because of my booting problems in general or because it didn't install correctly or what. In any case, I'm using Mint but I plant to disable writing to the drive once everything is set the way I want it (it will never need to be reconfigured in any way after that, and any files saved will be to a different drive).

Also, I just got my USB 3.0 sticks so I'll be messing with that pretty soon!

I sometimes pop in to see how things are going, and try and learn something.

Right now it's a toss-up whether it's a never-ending story (love that movie), and/or an educational journey ;)

Ladies and gentlemen, state your bets! Will op ever manage to boot into Linux succesfully? Odds are 14-1 against according to the bookies.

Taking bets now.

*grabs pencil*

I wish that was funny, but it's sad.

Experiment and see if you can get Knoppix booting off those 8GB & 16GB USB Sticks you have.
Knoppix is a highly specialized linux distro designed to be booted off USB sticks/CDrom/Dvd media.

I actually have a Knoppix DVD that I got many years ago, but it didn't occur to me that I could also install it onto a USB drive. I'll try it! Are there any goofy problems that I should potentially be aware of? Can I set the same video card parameters in GRUB (nomodeset xforcevesa) if I have driver problems? Does it corrupt GRUB on the HD when I install Knoppix onto the USB?

EDIT: Oh, but I can install stuff into the main partition where Knoppix is installed, right? Because it's essential that I be able to do that, and change and save new configurations all on that partition.