Linux Mint Forums

I've tried, but Gloria just won't install on a USB flash drive for me.

Although I have also tried to make a Live USB stick with Gloria, too, that didn't work either. My main concern is to treat the flash drive as if it is a hard disk drive, though, and just do a normal install. I have done this before with other distributions, but I have had no success lately, with Linux Mint 7, Ubuntu 9 or Fedora 11.

Today I bought two more 8Gb flash drives and both attempts to install on them failed with Error 17s, which, apparently, means (paraphrasing) GRUB can't figure out how to start things rolling.

One thing that worries me is that when GRUB gets installed, the host computer's hard drive is activated. This, I am pretty sure, is unusual. I don't remember the host's drive getting accessed while installing Linux to a USB flash drive before, so is there any connection with this and my problem?

Is there any way to find out if GRUB has been installed to a hard drive that should not have it?
I know there are ways of removing GRUB, but I just want to know if it is there now.

Can anyone clue me in on what is going so very wrong each and every time and how to fix this annoying problem?

There's several threads on USB installs, but I think the likely issue is your install partition is too big, causing Grub to fail to find the boot stuff near the beginning of the disk. Resizing the install partition, and creating a new data partition in the empty space should solve the issue, and if not, follow the guides.

When you mention..."I have done this before with other distributions" do you mean you have been able to boot from a USB stick from the same PC or just that you've done it before?

I'm guessing you're using that USB-creator tool for making these iso files into a bootable setup? I'm sorry I don't have anything but questions, I've not had any luck doing this either.

I did use the Image writer tool and the Ubuntu Netbook remix image to successfully install Ubuntu on my netbook. I just couldn't make Mint work.

On a side note: I had a 1Gb usb drive plugged into my machine at the same time I had my 1
Terrabyte ext. drive plugged in. Hundreds of videos on the 1Tb drive.
Well I hate to say but during the USB creation process I accidentally formatted the wrong drive!

If working from Windows, follow the instructions found at pendrivelinux.com for installing Mint 7.

If working from another Linux install, download & install unetbootin. I've used unetbootin for a dozen or so distros on the same 2GB USB stick and never had a problem.

OK, I unhooked the main hard drive and it finally booted (I am using the USB stick install now), so now I will have to figure out why GRUB is causing problems with a hard drive hooked up. I am pretty sure GRUB will be set to boot from hd0: and, of course, there will be two of them now - the USB stick and the HDD.

I haven't successfully edited GRUB files before, so this will be a learning experience for me.

I'd still like to know a simple test to know if GRUB is installed on any HDD or not.

optimize me wrote:If working from Windows, follow the instructions found at pendrivelinux.com for installing Mint 7.

If working from another Linux install, download & install unetbootin. I've used unetbootin for a dozen or so distros on the same 2GB USB stick and never had a problem.

Every method I had tried failed, including both of these. It's not as if I had not successfully done this before, either, and I still don't know why it always failed using two different computers.