Miray Forum

How can I boot HDClone from an 8GB USB Flash drive?

I have successfully booted HDClone from a 2GB USB Flash drive, but the 8GB drive just hangs with a black screen.

The 2GB drive is formatted FAT16, but the 8GB drive has to be formatted FAT32 because FAT16 does not support drives larger than 2GB.

Are there specific makes and models of USB Flash drives that can be made bootable for HDClone?

Thank you.

No, the bootability of a drive depends only on the computer's BIOS. With 8GB flash drives it might be that the emulation of the BIOS has problems accessing the entire drive and therefore refuses it.

There's no difference between FAT32 and FAT16 for the Boot loader.

With black screen you mean what of the following:
- after the BIOS start, you only get a black screen?
- you get the message "Loading Symobi" but nothing else?
- you get the message "Loading Symobi" with Symobi in color?
- you get the message "Loading Symobi" with the percentage bar, and after reaching 100% you get a black screen?

We have also found that booting is easier from a partitioned stick rather than from an unpartitioned. I don't know if Windows even supports such a big unpartitioned USB flash. In any case, you can use the "HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool" (google for it, you'll find it exactly under this name) to create a partitioned USB drive (make sure to save your data from the USB flash disc, as it will be reformatted).