Hi guys, I picked up a laptop about 3 or 4 years old at a rummage yesterday. On it was a sticker saying "Needs a hard drive", it was only $5 so I bought it and took it home. It didn't have its power cord, but I ordered one online for $8. In the mean time, I opened it up and it still has it's hard drive inside.
This makes me wonder if the person who gave it away knew what they were doing. If they knew enough to diagnose it as a bad hard drive, than wouldn't they have had the sense to take it out of the laptop before giving it away? Even a bad hard drive can still have information taken off of it.
I'm waiting for the power cord to arrive so I can try and start this thing up to see if it will even turn on. Assuming its the hard drive, I'll need to boot the laptop somehow to make sure everything else is working so I don't drop money on an expensive replacement hard drive and than discover that there was another issue with it.
So basically, is it possible to boot a laptop from a USB drive, and if it is could I get a link or a tutorial on how to do that? I'd appreciate it, it would be nice having this laptop for school since I don't have enough cash to afford one otherwise.
Check on boot for something similar to [I]Press [B]"key"[/B] to boot from alternative device[/I] or check out the BIOS for any way to change the boot settings.
It should be as simple as getting the BIOS screen up (The splash screen should tell which key to hit), going to the boot order section and moving USB/removable media to the top. To actually make a bootable stick, a quick google should list dozens of methods and programs to do so.
One thing I'd like to point out, since you plan on using this for school, is that laptop batteries have this wonderful tendency to die after a couple of years, so you may find yourself limited to wall-power only.
Try Tazusb ( worked great for me )
[url]http://www.objectif-securite.ch/slitaz/tazusb.exe[/url]
(If your too paranoid about a direct link go here then go to the bottom)
[url]http://www.pendrivelinux.com/creating-a-bootable-usb-ophcrack/[/url]
[QUOTE=Nazral;30683718]It should be as simple as getting the BIOS screen up (The splash screen should tell which key to hit), going to the boot order section and moving USB/removable media to the top. To actually make a bootable stick, a quick google should list dozens of methods and programs to do so.
One thing I'd like to point out, since you plan on using this for school, is that laptop batteries have this wonderful tendency to die after a couple of years, so you may find yourself limited to wall-power only.[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the heads up, I'll keep that in mind =)
[editline]24th June 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=Maksim;30683765]Try Tazusb ( worked great for me )
[url]http://www.objectif-securite.ch/slitaz/tazusb.exe[/url]
(If your too paranoid about a direct link go here then go to the bottom)
[url]http://www.pendrivelinux.com/creating-a-bootable-usb-ophcrack/[/url][/QUOTE]
I'll look into this, thanks!
Just bumping this to let you guys know I've got the thing up and running after a reformat, just need to clean out it's fan and install some software and it should be good to go.
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