Problems recognising USB drives

[Arthur Marsh]

I'm trying to organise grub so that I can have a grub menu item to boot 
off a USB drive, as this machine does not support booting from a USB device.

When I try with one of my USB drives I get:

victoria:/home/amarsh04# grub-install /dev/hda
error: out of partition
error: out of partition
error: out of partition
error: out of partition
error: out of partition
error: out of partition
Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /boot/grub/device.map.
Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect,
fix it and re-run the script `grub-install'.

(hd0)   /dev/hda
(hd1)   /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SIBM_DCAS-34330W_F3T92021
#(hd2)   /dev/disk/by-id/usb-Verbatim_STORE_N_GO_078A18B40293-0:0
(hd2)   /dev/disk/by-id/usb-Flash_Drive_AU_USB2.0_OGUN4WMN-0:0
victoria:/home/amarsh04#

 fdisk -l /dev/sda
GNU Fdisk 1.2.1
Copyright (C) 1998 - 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This program is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.


Disk /dev/sda: 8 GB, 8134801920 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 989 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1         990     7952143   83  Linux
Warning: Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.


When I try it with another USB drive I get:

victoria:/home/amarsh04# grub-install /dev/hda
Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /boot/grub/device.map.
Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect,
fix it and re-run the script `grub-install'.

(hd0)   /dev/hda
(hd1)   /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SIBM_DCAS-34330W_F3T92021
(hd2)   /dev/disk/by-id/usb-Verbatim_STORE_N_GO_078A18B40293-0:0
#(hd2)   /dev/disk/by-id/usb-Flash_Drive_AU_USB2.0_OGUN4WMN-0:0
victoria:/home/amarsh04#

ictoria:/home/amarsh04# fdisk -l /dev/sda
GNU Fdisk 1.2.1
Copyright (C) 1998 - 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This program is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.


Disk /dev/sda: 2 GB, 2002780160 bytes
16 heads, 32 sectors/track, 7640 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 512 * 512 = 262144 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          16        7640     1955584    e  FAT16 LBA
victoria:/home/amarsh04#


victoria:/home/amarsh04# update-grub
Generating grub.cfg ...
Warning: update-grub_lib is deprecated, use grub-mkconfig_lib instead
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-1-686
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-1-686
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-1-686
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-1-686
Warning: update-grub_lib is deprecated, use grub-mkconfig_lib instead
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
Found Windows 95/98/Me on /dev/hda1
Found Windows 95/98/Me on /dev/sdb1
done
victoria:/home/amarsh04#

update-grub did not find the bootable sysrescue image on the second USB 
drive used as /dev/sda (Verbatim store and go), yet on another machine 
I've been able to use a sysrecuecd to then boot from the Verbatim USB drive.

Does anyone have any suggestions on making it possible for GRUB to show 
a USB drive with boot image in the GRUB menu?

Regards,

Arthur Marsh.