USB Security Key

[silentsudo]

I installed BT4 R2 on my laptop to a 20GB partition on the back of my drive. It automatically created a boot loader to choose between it and windows seven.

I want to take that boot loader and put it on a small flash drive so if the flash drive is not in the machine during boot it just boots to windows seven. I also want to make sure this flash drive is encrypted or protected in a way that if its plugged into a computer other then the one with my unique installation of BT4 R2 on the HDD the loader won't display at all and just boot the machine.

If someone knows of a tutorial on accomplishing this or something similar to the concept I Thank you in advance for all contributions.

-ss

[hhmatt]

I suppose you could try to install grub or unetbootin and set the boot options to the proper partitions on the flash drive. Then change the boot order in your bios. You will also need to use the windows 7 install disk to fixboot and fixmbr. This may or may not even work.

If the flash drive is plugged into another computer their bios will need to be set to boot to usb first in order for it to even display the boot options on the flash drive. And the partition scheme will be different so it will not matter if it does boot to the flash drive.

Although I don't know why you would want to do any of this.

[orgcandman]

I suppose you could try to install grub or unetbootin and set the boot options to the proper partitions on the flash drive. Then change the boot order in your bios. You will also need to use the windows 7 install disk to fixboot and fixmbr. This may or may not even work.

The theory is sound. It's not really a good way of preventing someone from booting BT4R2 - unless the OP manages to encrypt the entire BT partition as well. Otherwise, anyone could simply configure a grub installation to boot the system.

That will require that OP delves into building an initrd, and how LUKS or similar encryption schemes work. Regardless, it means that the OP cannot encrypt his/her flash drive - so keep it secret, keep it safe applies.

If the flash drive is plugged into another computer their bios will need to be set to boot to usb first in order for it to even display the boot options on the flash drive. And the partition scheme will be different so it will not matter if it does boot to the flash drive.

This is not correct. Most modern machines have had a "hit this button to choose the boot device" option for a long time. That won't require ANY special config changes.

2nd wth are you talking about w.r.t. partitioning? Your statement doesn't make sense - are you trying to say you can't use grub to boot any random computer? False. Are you saying that plugging the OPs HDD into a different machine will make the partition information bogus? FALSE. I don't even think the UUIDs will change, since the HDD isn't changing (could be wrong on that).