Amazingly enough, circumstances have left me without a single USB flash drive, or a working CD-R drive. Also, because I moved about six months ago, I got rid of all my extra Ubuntu CDs that I used to get by mail. (cleanup win, hindsight fail) And yet, I need to get a live Ubuntu going to boot up a wonky desktop computer.
I tried using unetbootin to put a live CD install onto a portable USB hard-drive, but it won't boot from it (NTLDR missing error).
Is this because the disk is NTFS (which it is)? or for some other reason? Is there a difference between booting from a portable USB thumbdrive and a portable USB hard drive, other than potential performance?