The CODi Mini Flash Memory/Disk is today’s latest solution for data storage replacing floppies, CDs and hard disks. They will store virtually anything that can be saved on a computer. The CODi Mini Flash Memory/Disk is available in 32MB, 64MB, 128MB, 256MB, 512MB and 1GB versions.

The Mini Flash Memory/Disk supports Windows 98, Windows 98SE, Windows ME, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. It also supports Mac OS 9.0 and above as well as Linux 2.4 Kernel, or greater.

The Mini Flash Memory/Disk does not require a driver for Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Mac OS 9.0 and higher. For Windows 98, the installation of a USB Mass Storage Device driver is necessary. The driver software is included with the product on a floppy diskette. Linux users may need to add USB Mass Storage support to your Kernel, either natively, or as a module. See your distribution documentation for more information.

To determine if your USB Flash Memory/Disk is bootable, you must know the following:

• Does your BIOS support a USB device as a bootable drive?

  This is the number one issue that people have trouble with. Most modern BIOS add support for USB in one form or another.

  1. The most basic support available is known as USB Legacy Device Support. This extension to the PC BIOS supports the use of a USB keyboard and mouse during the boot process. It simply means your keyboard and mouse will work as soon as the PC is turned on.
  2. Many modern BIOS also support, in a limited fashion, the ability to boot from a USB device. Support for this feature does not automatically mean you can boot from any USB device. It means you can boot from some USB devices. Currently, for most BIOS, this means a USB floppy drive. However, some BIOS that claim to support booting from a USB hard disk contain bugs that prevent them from doing so properly. The Dell Latitude 800 Series is a good example. According to Dell you have to update your BIOS to version A03 to work around this bug. More information on this particular bug is available on the BIOS download page at Dell's Support Forums. Refer to the "Fixes and Enhancements" section on this page.
  3. Some BIOS also support booting from a USB zip drive or CDROM but again this is an exception, not the rule.

  Support in the BIOS for booting from a USB device is accomplished through "IDE Emulation". IDE Emulation lets the BIOS scan the computer's USB ports looking for actual IDE devices or devices that look like (emulate) an IDE device. So, if a BIOS supports booting from a USB floppy drive, it will look for a real USB floppy drive or another device that can emulate the behavior of a USB floppy drive.

  At this time the CODi USB Flash Memory emulates a USB hard drive. We are working closely with our vendors to come up with a method for changing the CODi Flash Memory to support floppy, hard disk or zip drive emulation.

• Is your USB Memory device formatted to be bootable?

  A drive partition must be marked active in order for it to be bootable. Typically this is achieved with a disk formatting program, or the DOS command "fdisk." A CODi USB Flash Memory comes out of the box with it's single partition marked active. Unless you reformat the device, the CODi Flash Memory will emulate a USB hard drive that has been marked active (bootable).

• Does the USB Memory device contain system files necessary for booting an OS? The answer to this question depends on what Operating System you are running.
  1. Windows 98 or Windows ME

     These systems come with a set of boot files that are used to create install and rescue floppies. A user can simply copy these files to a USB Flash Memory and if your BIOS supports booting from a USB hard drive than you now have a bootable device.

  2. Windows XP (all editions)

     XP also supports creation of an MSDOS disk, albeit a bit differently than Windows 98 or ME. XP does not support the creation of a bootable disk that will run XP, it creates an MSDOS disk that you can use to boot to Microsoft's latest version of MSDOS. Most people do this simply to play games that won't work with XP's native MSDOS emulation. At this time the only devices that can be formatted this way via XP's native interface are floppy disks. However this does not prevent you from copying the files yourself to the USB Flash Memory as the files are licensed for your use through the Windows XP license.

  3. Windows 2000

     Windows 2000 does not offer any native method to copy DOS files to a disk. This also means that Microsoft does not license the use of MSDOS files through a Windows 2000 license.

  And finally, Windows OS's are not designed to be run from a removable disk. Here is a direct quote from a Microsoft white paper concerning the ability to boot a Windows OS using USB removable storage:
  

  "paper focuses solely on booting from hard disk drives and CD-ROM drives for recovery and deployment purposes. Windows as it exists today is currently not optimized to run as an installed operating system from USB attached mass-storage or CD."

  The entire document can be downloaded here*
  Recommendations for Booting Windows from USB Storage Devices
  This is a self extracting executable archive that contains a Word Document.
  *Note: This is Microsoft Preliminary Documentation and is subject to change. No guarantee or suggestion is made that this document will prove useful for a particular purpose. The link is also subject to change and may be updated or removed at CODi's discretion.

  Even were it possible to run an entire OS from the flash memory, CODi does not recommend this due to the inherent write limitations of USB Flash Memory devices. All flash memory today regardless of the brand or housing (including USB Flash Memory, flash disks for cameras, etc.) suffers from this limitation. The actual write limitation on most USB Flash disks is 1,000,000 writes. When an OS runs it needs to make a lot of temporary writes to a disk and you could easily exceed the 1,000,000 write limit in a matter of months.

In short, the USB Flash Memory can be bootable. It must meet the same conditions as other bootable disks, i.e., floppies, CDs and hard disks. First, your system BIOS must support booting from a USB device. If your BIOS supports this function, then your USB Memory device must be formatted to be bootable and have the first 512 bytes of readable memory designated as the "boot sector."

Lastly, the appropriate bootable files must be loaded on the USB Memory device. These bootable files should be consistent with your current operating system. I.e. You can get a hold of bootable MSDOS files and create a boot disk in Windows 2000 by copying the appropriate files to the disk. However if you boot this disk and your Windows 2000 hard disk is formatted using the NTFS File System (recommended for performance, security and stability reasons) you will not be able to access your hard drive from the MSDOS environment you booted. There are third party tools on the market that can get around this by loading their own special NTFS drivers for DOS but these tools are outside the scope of what this document provides and are, for the most part, unsupported by Microsoft.