How to get Puppy to treat USB like H.D.? (Solved)

[sunburnt]

I thought occured to me that why deal with the ram to USB save?
Much better is to use the USB as a H.D. and mount Save file directly.

New Flash drives have a much better life span than the old ones.
My new PC has only a 64GB USB2 drive. Next one will be USB3.

[Burn_IT]

There is a bit in the control section of a USB that sometimes can be flipped to make a USB emulation into a HD.
Look at a (Windows) application called Bootit

[drunkjedi]

Try puppy with boot parameter "PMEDIA=usbhd"

I believe I had once used PMEDIA=atahd too while booting from usb pen drive.

It changes the pupmode, if I remember correctly.
I think you are after same thing.

I don't recall correctly as I was trying out boot options when I first came to puppy.

[gyro]

As drunkjedi suggests use "pmedia=usbhd".
The trigger for the odd pupmodes is a pmedia ending in "flash".

If all the puppy files are on usb then use "pmedia=usbhd", this means puppy will only look on the usb devices.
If you want to split puppy files between ata and usb devices, then use "pmedia=atahd".

gyro

[sunburnt]

Thanks drunkjedi and gyro; I didn`t think the pmedia values worked like that.
I`ll have to look at them again and see if it describes using them this way.

[gyro]

"Use the source Luke, use the source"
gyro

[sunburnt]

I tried usbhd and it was a mess, Puppy was slow and buggy.

I`m writing this with atahd and so far it`s working well.

[Flash]

...New Flash drives have a much better life span than the old ones....

Have you actually "worn out" a flash drive? I've had one or two flash drives go south on me but they weren't very old and hadn't seen much use, so I figure they failed for some other reason than wearing out.

Years ago, a forum member, I forget who, was going to test some flash drives by constantly writing to them to see how long they lasted. I don't remember seeing anything about the results.

[Sailor Enceladus]

The flash stick I use is 512MB, it must be at least 10 years old, still works great after all this time writing to it and carrying it around everywhere.

[sunburnt]

Hey Flash; Long time no talk to, good to hear from you.

I have old flash drives and none have ever failed.
But then I never used them for intensive duty either.

I just bought a 64GB for my main drive and am using a 2GB for swap.

[phat7]

Years ago, a forum member, I forget who, was going to test some flash drives by constantly writing to them to see how long they lasted. I don't remember seeing anything about the results.

Still testing?

[Geoffrey]

There is a bit in the control section of a USB that sometimes can be flipped to make a USB emulation into a HD.
Look at a (Windows) application called Bootit

lexar bootit.exe utility to flip the Removable Media Bit setting of a USB drive
bootit.tar.gz this doesn't always work with some flash drives

[Burn_IT]

Hence the word SOMETIMES.
It depends whether that bit of memory is included in the protected memory of the drive or not.

[sunburnt]

Update: I tried pmedia=usbhd and it messed with my current PC badly.
Then I tried pmedia=atahd and it seems to be working very nicely.
The USB flash drive is now working just as the H.D. before it did.

Many thanks to all you guys for your help. Puppy is a great distro.!

[slavvo67]

Isn't that exactly what Quirky does? This is the sole reason I use Barry's Quirky more often than Puppies. When you install to the USB, it also auto saves there. No need for a separate save file....

[sunburnt]

slavvo67; A save file or partition is always required.

Any Puppy files can be on most any drive attached to the PC.
Puppy on a flash drive and the save file on an H.D.