[Mageia-discuss] Bootable external drive

[Phil]

Thank you for reading this.

Over the years I've attempted to create a bootable external USB drive, 
but without success. Recently I tried unetbootin which is supposed to 
download and install a Linux distribution of choice and then create a 
bootable disc. It all seems to work well except my laptop won't boot 
from the newly created bootable external drive.

I've occasionally forgotten to unplug my e-book reader and the next time 
that I start the computer I'm informed that "this is not a bootable 
disc." So, the computer does detect whether an external device is 
bootable or not.

My question is, how can I determine whether the external drive is indeed 
bootable or not? Is there a bit that's set somewhere if it's bootable?

-- 
Regards,
Phil