Pup_save to different CD/DVD drive

[pattpup]

Hello,

Some background: I have a Dell c840 laptop. This machine has 1GB of memory, a very limited, 40GB HDD, which is full, a CD-RW/DVD-R drive and a CD/DVD RW drive.

After playing with Puppy 2.14 for about a week I have already had to remaster because I had no space left on the boot CD. I can make a multi-session DVD (on my desktop PC) which I can boot on the c840 but cannot do a pup_save to it.

The reason is that the BIOS limits me to booting from the CD-RW/DVD-R drive. And when Puppy shuts down it insists on writing to the boot drive which cannot write DVDs. Puppy sees the CD/DVD-RW drive and I can mount it.

I would dearly like to use the multi-session DVD for pup_saves but cannot find a way to do this. Perhaps there is none because this is hard-coded into Puppy 2.14. Can anyone suggest a work around?

Also needed is a way to ignore early pup_saves at boot time, not only the most recent ones. I have seen this request elsewhere in the forums. Just adding my $0.02.

Thanks.

[Flash]

If you open the computer and swap the two drives, would the BIOS then boot from the DVD burner drive?

To answer your question directly, I don't know any way to boot from one drive and save to a different drive, but I don't see why it couldn't be done. After all, you can save to a USB flash drive.

[HairyWill]

Its a while since I've used multi-session.
After you've booted can you use menu - setup CD/DVD Drive Wizard to change the settings of what the default burner is?

[pattpup]

If you open the computer and swap the two drives, would the BIOS then boot from the DVD burner drive?

To answer your question directly, I don't know any way to boot from one drive and save to a different drive, but I don't see why it couldn't be done. After all, you can save to a USB flash drive.

I cannot open the computer and swap drives. it is a laptop with proprietary bays and the CD-RW/DVD-ROM slot is physically different from the DVD-RAM bay. The BIOS constrains me to boot from what is in the CD-RW/DVD-ROM slot.

Perhaps it can be done as per a USB flash drive, but I have not found how to do it. Puppy does not offer me the option on shutdown. It appears it will only do a pup_save to the multi-session CD in the drive from which I booted.

Info: MUT reports:
/dev/hda is the (completly full) internal HDD
/dev/hdb is the CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive
/dev/hdc is the the DVD-RAM (i.e. writeable) drive

Other ideas anyone?

thanks.

[pattpup]

Its a while since I've used multi-session.
After you've booted can you use menu - setup CD/DVD Drive Wizard to change the settings of what the default burner is?

I tried to do this but it did not work. Maybe I did something wrong? Puppy still insisted on saving to the CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive. See my reply to Flash about drive configurations as seen by Puppy 2.14 .

Thanks.

[HairyWill]

OK,
Think about the problem a different way. We are not sure if puppy can do what you want.
Why not move a couple of GBs of stuff off the hard drive onto a DVD, keep the DVD with the data in the drive and use the space on the HDD for puppy?

[pattpup]

OK,
Think about the problem a different way. We are not sure if puppy can do what you want.
Why not move a couple of GBs of stuff off the hard drive onto a DVD, keep the DVD with the data in the drive and use the space on the HDD for puppy?

Thanks. A better (but more expensive) solution which I think I will follow is to buy a larger HDD - say 40GB to which I can move my current stuff all on NTFS partitions and make a couple of FAT partitions for both Win and Puppy accessibility.

It would still be nice if I could put pup_saves on a multi-session DVD in the DVD-RAM (RW) drive at shutdown, though.