Ahh, this maybe where some of the confusing behavior we were seeing comes from. Let me repeat what I think I understand so I can see if I have it right. FAT is the same thing as FAT16 FAT is only an option for USB sticks 2 GB or less. You can only format a USB stick larger then 2 GB as FAT32. Some computers will not boot from a FAT32 formatted stick but some will. Thus if you put SoaS onto a 4 GB USB it will fail on some computers and not others. A partition allows you to have one part of the USB formatted differently then another part. Thus a work around if you want to use a USB stick larger then 2GB would be to create a smaller partition for the boot area and format that as FAT. Let me know what I have right and wrong! Thanks!! Caroline <div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 10:04 AM, Martin Langhoff <<a href="mailto:martin.langhoff@gmail.com">martin.langhoff@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> <div class="im">On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 12:11 AM, Caroline Meeks <<a href="mailto:caroline@solutiongrove.com">caroline@solutiongrove.com</a>> wrote: > trying to tease out what all the different failure mechanisms are </div>One failure mode I know of: Most USB sticks come pre-formatted from factory in a funny "FAT-16 LBA" partition mode and fs format. If you remove the partition and recreated it, most tools (and users!) will default to FAT-32 for new FAT partitions. And oftentimes BIOSes can't handle booting from FAT-32. I've spotted this on my (earlyish) EEE 701 and I think OFW also has (had?) this limitation. So if you have a non-booting disk, it's worthwhile asking fdisk about the partition mode, and check what the file utility says about the contents of the block device (in the partition). cheers, martin -- <a href="mailto:martin.langhoff@gmail.com">martin.langhoff@gmail.com</a> <a href="mailto:martin@laptop.org">martin@laptop.org</a> -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - <a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff</a> </blockquote></div> -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove Caroline@SolutionGrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax