maro
thankyou for your excellent reply...I have not had time to test all of your suggestions as I was testing other things to make sure my post below was reproducible by me....
The closest I got to a norestore condition...BEFORE reading your reply is this
hard drive bootloader chainloads to usb bootloader
bios changed to boot usb before hard drive
usb menu in legacy terms become
title usb
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/bzImage norestore usbwait=5 tce=sdb1
initrd /boot/tinycore.gz
I did not want to install a web browser to this usb system so took a snapshot and saved to hard drive
Some of the more obvious to me were.....lxde not showing....good sign
cpan filesystem stats shows /dev/sdb1......good....correct size for usb first partition
backup device....................sda2...............bad
2) As you have already explained the driver seat issue.....which I was thinking might be an issue as per (4) in my second post
The issue only raises itself for someone booting an USB device where they have a internal or multiple TC system.
So if I take this usb stick to a friends computer....the backup will not be sda2....but not sure if will truly fall to sdb1.
3) Yes I am confused because.....err...in setting bios boot order to usb.....usb should now be sda1.....but when I tried cheatcode sda1.... the system stats showed the size of /dev/sda1 as being NOT 688MB but the size of my real hard drive......eeek.
Your (a) If you get a chance.....what do you mean by an older tce directory structure.....I am hoping this is the key?
Your (b).....I agree....but I was attempting to show that my usb TC is first partition and hd is second partition
Your (c)....thanks for confirming
Your (d) ....not tested yet....thanks for the update...much appreciated.
Your other suggestions that relate to not pointing to /dev/structure but UUID.....I have not tested so far. I think your are kindly suggesting my first post (5) was in error.
more testing for me.