#1 2026-01-23 01:13:15

dbickin

Member

Registered: 2015-09-30

Posts: 82

strange USB behavior

I bought a new USB thumb drive, and have tried to use it to test a live iso.

Now, IF my pc is shut off, and I insert the drive, then hit the power button, it lights up for a second, then shuts off again. Then about 3 seconds later, it will light up again and will boot from the USB drive with no problems.

But IF I tell my pc to reboot, it shuts everything down, then starts to reboot but it will ignore the USB drive and reboot from the internal hard drive. And I notice warning messages from the now booting distro saying it couldn't find the drive cache or something like that. Everything seems to work when the system is up and running.

No other USB thumb drive does this, just this one.

Like I said, everything does appear to work, but what do you suppose could be causing this?

Thanks,
David

PackRat

jgmenu user Numero Uno

Registered: 2015-10-02

Posts: 2,834

Re: strange USB behavior

What brand of thumb drive?

Been a while, but last time I saw odd behavior similar to this, it was because the thumb drive had a factory-installed partition on it that was for use by Windows. Need to remove that partition.

---

You must unlearn what you have learned.
    -- yoda

dbickin

Member

Registered: 2015-09-30

Posts: 82

Re: strange USB behavior

I already tossed the package, but it was a no name brand from Amazon.
Using parted, I see there is a second partition with an "esp" flag at
/dev/sdg2. But, h'm, my other USB drive with Ventoy also has that second partition and it doesn't cause any problems.

David

greenjeans

Member

Registered: 2025-01-18

Posts: 313

Website

Re: strange USB behavior

I just thought this was common behavior, that's what my machine does, if i'm running a live-session off a usb and tell it to re-boot, it will boot to my HDD grub screen instead of the liveusb, wife's machine same thing, and it doesn't matter what usb stick we use they all act the same. I have to shut the computer down, then plug in a stick, then hit power and i'll get the liveusb boot screen.