Bootable Flash Drive
The machine is a Samsung netbook, thus no cd/dvd drive. Running XP SP3. The boot software loads successfully from Acronis.
Are some flash drives simply not bootable? I am using a Lexar drive. Using Acronis True Image Home 11.0 I am creating or attempting to create a bootable drive so I can boot from this should I need to use Acronis to restore an image. In the BIOS I can see and have moved the Lexar drive to the number 1 position and enabled it using shift +1.
On restarting it boots to the hard disk every time. I don't even see the light blink as if the flash drive is being checked.
If it is the flash drive how can I find one that will work?

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I had the same thing happen to me, but upon going back into the BIOS setup I realized there were two USB entries, one for a USB hard drive, and another for a USB memory stick. I had moved the USB HD up in the boot ordering a long time ago, so I thought I had all USB devices before the main HD. But after looking at it again it showed that the USB memory stick was still at number 4, so I was still booting off the main HD.
In your case it appears that you have recently looked at the ordering, so it doesn't sound like the same issue. But are you sure the BIOS supports a USB memory stick and not just a USB hard drive?
I have used some very old 128M sticks and got them to boot, so in my case I've never encountered a stick that wouldn't boot. I would assume if you've properly loaded the right boot code onto the stick it should boot unless either 1) your machine doesn't support booting from USB sticks, or 2) you haven't written the boot code to the stick properly.
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One thing to watch out for is having the partition on the usb drive active and also visible (not hidden) and for that you can use Disk Management or something like the Disk Director from Acronis. Additionally, look for 'HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool' that can sometimes help with the boot record on the USB drive
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This may help here.
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/14047#comment-42064
Also check item MudCrab's 8-D and 8-G inside my signature link below.
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