can libreelec boot pc without usb

**chewitt** · April 23, 2019 at 6:06 PM Official Post

The USB/SD Creator app will write to any removable device. Some USB > IDE/SATA adaptors might not show up as removable, but the majority do and you should be able to write the image direct to the drive. The "USB" (or drive) should boot into installer mode by default, but it you hit any key at the syslinux prompt it will stop boot and you can type "run" to "USB boot with persistent storage" but it's not USB specific, it just creates a persistent /storage partition and changes the boot config from "installer" to "run" permanently. You might need to fiddle with boot settings to enable/disable UEFI or legacy boot support and in rare cases the BIOS/firmware might object to syslinux in which case you can always install grub as an alternative. The grub boot config is slightly different but extlinux.conf has all the details you need to set something up. As a general rule systems with problem firmware tend to be a bit too old and since (as a distro) we don't focus on old hardware at all, you may find drivers are missing.

trogggy · April 25, 2019 at 9:02 AM

Quote from chewitt

The USB/SD Creator app will write to any removable device.

That's how I've always understood it - but you seem to be saying a 'removeable device' includes hard drives?

None of my external hard drives show as 'removeable' in windows (using diskpart) they appear as 'partitions' when running 'list volume'.

All of my usb sticks show as 'removeable'.

The LE sd creator gui refers to 'USB stick or sd card'. It detects my usb sticks but not usb hard drives. Is that not the expected behaviour?

**vpeter** · April 25, 2019 at 9:24 AM

If you have problem writing image to your USB drive then try to use different program like Rufus. Maybe it will show your fixed device.

trogggy · April 25, 2019 at 9:35 AM

I don't have a problem. It's just an observation.

In windows the usb creator app sees flash drives / sd cards but not spinny hard drives (or presumably usb-connected ssd's)..

All the documentation refers to usb sticks / sd cards, so I've assumed that's normal / intended behaviour. There's a ton of software out there that behaves similarly, so that seemed reasonable.

Windows doesn't generally recognise hard drives as 'removeable' (see above re diskpart). I'll try the creator app in linux to compare behaviour.

Edit: There's a difference in behaviour between the linux and windows versions...
In linux the creator app sees hard drives and flash media.

In windows it only sees flash media.

Tested on the same hardware - windows 10 pro and mint.

**vpeter** · April 25, 2019 at 10:23 AM

On Windows it intentionally list only removable devices: usb-sd-creator/deviceenumerator_windows.cpp at master · LibreELEC/usb-sd-creator · GitHub

trogggy · April 25, 2019 at 10:50 AM

Quote from vpeter

On Windows it intentionally list only removable devices

I thought that's what I was saying / querying in my reply to #19...

Edit. From the op:

Quote

Since the usb boots and bypasses windows os I know this has to be possible

If he's running the creator app in windows he won't be able to write to a hard drive with it.

Ci25cong · August 15, 2019 at 7:27 AM

It is possible to boot pc without USB,you can create a boot drive with other device (CD and DVD).Have a try it.

UUbyte - The Best Provider of ISO and DMG Toolkit it does a good job of that.

can libreelec boot pc without usb

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