can libreelec boot pc without usb

    • 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.

    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?

    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.

    Edited 2 times, last by trogggy (April 25, 2019 at 10:01 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.