[Solved] Creating bootable USB without CD

[vltcl]

THANK YOU.

This was waaaaay to obscure.
"ls -la /mnt/YourDevice" and NewUser's information was the key. In fact there was a whole directory called 'System Volume Information'. I deleted it and core2usb ran succesfully. It booted successfully and I am in tc@box:~$ now. Thank you all.

[Rich]

Hi vltcl
Glad to hear you resolved this. I was beginning to run out of ideas. Just curious, was  'System Volume Information'  a hidden
directory? Was it visible under Windows Explorer?

[vltcl]

It was hidden and it is installed on every drive, when formatting with windows

[Rich]

Hi vltcl
I'm just going to provide a summary here.

I took a look at the source code for  core2usb.  It does not appear to check to see if a bootloader is already present. So
using the  dd  command to zero out part of the USB drive is completely unnecessary.

Some (all?) versions of Windows add hidden files/directories when formatting drives. core2usb.exe expects a drive to be
empty or it won't run.

To make hidden files visible in Windows Explorer so you cam delete them ...
Windows 8 and 10:
Click the "View" tab on File Explorers ribbon and click the "Hidden items" checkbox in the Show/hide section.

Windows 7:
Click the "Organize" button on Windows Explorers toolbar and select "Folder and search options".
Click the "View" tab at the top of the Folder Options window. Select "Show hidden files, folders, and drives". Click "OK"
to save the new setting.

"Creating bootable USB without CD":
Format your removable USB drive.
Delete all files and directories on your removable USB drive.
Use  core2usb.exe  to install Tinycore to your removable USB drive.

[vltcl]

Yes, I would like to add, that if your USB drive has a storage space greater than 32GB you need to create a filesystem (FAT32 or FAT) from linux or use third party software on windows, because windows does not allow FAT32 or FAT for those kinds of devices. FAT and (as NewUser mentioned above) FAT32 seem to work with Core2USB. I have no knowledge about exFAT or NTFS and Core2USB, maybe someone can try that.

Windows 8 and 10: Click the "View" tab on File Explorers ribbon and click the "Hidden items" checkbox in the Show/hide section.

Also I am not sure about this way because I actually had this checkbox checked and I use Windows 10. So in case this doesn't work I recommend:

1. Press "Win+X" then press "a" - this opens up the powershell in admin mode
2. type "get-disk" to get a list of all connected drives
3. look for the desired drive and remember the number, then type "get-partition -number number"
4. see which letter the desired drive is assigned to and type "set-location driveletter:"
5. type "remove-item -recursive -force" and press tab - that way the hidden folder is suggested/revealed
6. press enter and repeat 4. until nothing is suggested

[NewUser]

I collect USB thumb drives, a bad habit, many of them are larger than Windows 10 will format FAT32. I use a small program call GUIformat to handle the larger 128-256GB drives.