[syslinux] Trying to boot a SSD of 500GB

[Renato]

Hi,

I have a custom linux system that runs off a FAT32 usb flash disk.  I
use syslinux to make it bootable and load the kernel.

I'm trying to boot now from a SSD SATA disk (500GB) but it's not
working and I can't figure out why. BIOS show that no bootable disk
were found.

What I already tried (linux fdisk):

1- Creating a new DOS partition table on the SSD, a FAT32 (type b),
and formating with mkfs.vfat -F32 and then calling syslinux /dev/sda1
-> No boot

2- Creating the FAT32 directly on /dev/sda and calling syslinux -f
/dev/sda1 -> No boot too

3- Creating a smaller FAT32 partition (16GB) -> Did not work too

The only way I could get it to work was cloning a working usb flash
(4GB) to the ssd, like this:

dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sda


I'm using syslinux 4.05 (from Ubuntu 14.04 repository).

fdisk -l /dev/sda :

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
232 heads, 62 sectors/track, 67906 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x499f6446

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048    62916607    31457280    b  W95 FAT32

OBS: I tried to change the default 255/63 heads/sectors to 232/62 to
make those multiples of the sector size.



Anyone have any idea of what I am doing wrong?

Thanks