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I use USB sticks to install different operating systems, mainly Linux distros, which can fit on a 2GB USB stick.

I have one 16 GB Kingston USB stick ( in fact: 16 GB Kingston Datatraveler G3) that I am not able to use as live USB at all, although I tried all the methods that work fine with the 2GB ones for creating live usb sticks for different Linux distributions.

It is this one:

enter image description here

What happens is that it is not at all displayed in the boot devices list, as if it was not there at all. All procedures of creating a live USB seem to work fine with it, but then it is not detected at all.

I have noticed that other USB sticks that I have, even completely formatted and empty, once connected appear as a third entry in the device boot list (although not bootable). The 16 GB Kingston is not seen: just two entries (the HDD and the CDROM) are then in the list.

What could be the cause of this?

The 16GB stick seems fine in all other respects, I have formatted it multiple times, also created new partition table to try to fix this. All systems see it as a normal fat32 usb, except that I cannot make it visible at all when trying to boot from it, while the computer is able to boot from many different other sticks.

How could I check that it is bootable and how to ensure that it is?

Edit after comment saying to use this solution:

  • Check Flash in Windows reported no errors on write, read and verify.

  • H2testw reported no errors and displayed 14861 MB

enter image here

Edit after comment saying to add boot flag:

The boot flag was easy to set in Linux with Gparted.

enter image description here

But still the usb stick is absent in the boot list. Odd.

Before that I had deleted the partition and created a msdos partition table:

enter image description here

Should I try another type of partition table? I do not think so, because I tested with a 2GB USB with a new msdospartition table and no boot flag, and that appeared in the boot list.

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  • I'd first check it's a real 15GB stick - some tools at raymond.cc/blog/how-to-check-and-test-usb-flash-drive
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 20:54
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    It could be anything; first step of determining whether the 'box describes the contents' just eliminates that as the issue.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 21:08
  • h2testw is the 'accepted' tool for checking real capacity - softpedia.com/get/System/System-Miscellaneous/H2testw.shtml
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Mar 6, 2015 at 21:14
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    Your flash may be recognized as HDD and shown under HDD drive order. Check this. And ensure you have "Legacy USB" in your BIOS enabled and "Security Boot" disabled.
    – Mike
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 19:45
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    It appears that your computer's BIOS does not have support for 16GB USB memory sticks. There might be a BIOS update which enables support. Are there any hints in the motherboard's documentation?
    – Andrew Morton
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 19:48

2 Answers 2

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It appears that your computer's BIOS does not have support for 16GB USB memory sticks. There might be a BIOS update which enables support. You should consult the motherboard's documentation to confirm any limitation.

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  • instead of updating BIOS I will just use a cd/dvd boot to install operating systems. (although I should also try to use a 8GB memory stick, as I want to install Open Suse which is 4.7 GB)
    – user162573
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 21:13
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One solution is to create a smaller 8GB partition if the BIOS doesn't support booting from a larger 16GB USB. You will sacrifice space, but should be able to use it to boot. This method won't work if the entire 16GB is needed, but the post indicates everything fits on 2GB.

NOTE: This will remove all data from the USB and create an 8GB partition.

From an administrator command line type the following:

diskpart
list disk
select disk X  (where X is the actual disk# of your USB).
clean
create partition primary size=8192
format fs=fat32 quick
active
exit
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  • In fact I mainly use Linuxes of less than 2GB. In this case there was a larger one. Your answer allows me to test if my machine and BIOS can cope with 4GB or more.
    – user162573
    Commented Jul 7, 2015 at 9:56

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