Booting OS on External Hard Drive?

[nlavers]

Hello Everyone... here's to a great year at the Audio Forums!

I have one question please...

Can I plug in an External Hard Drive(USB or Firewire) to my newer Win. XP based Notebook and boot the External drive with it's own separate Win. XP OS and programs loaded on it and run it off my notebook? ...bypassing the laptop drive altogether?

I don't know if I am asking this right??

...but I would like to be able to boot an external drive with a separate operating system on it and audio software and use my notebook as the controller.

Can this be done at all?

If so, could someone explain how one would do this or send a link to me please?

If I can do this... I would like to buy this External Drive (USB/Firewire?)
Western Digital Raptor series (model WD740GD
10000 RMP speed ... in a custom enclosure.

Thank-you kindly... Nelson


Basic Studio Setup

Asus Z7100 Notebook
1.73 GHz
1 GB Ram
WIN XP SP2

Motu Traveler
Mackie Tracktion 2 Recording Software

[AndyH]

When one wants to boot from other than the C drive it is necessary to set an option in the boot section of BIOS setup. This is the way if you want to book from a diskette drive, a CD-Rom drive, or a hard drive on a SCSI controller. An external hard drive is probably considered a SCSI device in the BIOS, even though it isn't really.

Possibly this can be set-up so that it always looks for the external drive but goes on to the regular drive if the external isn't present. Otherwise, you will have to adjust the BIOS everytime you want to switch between internal and external.

[itsplayed]

Some systems BIOS will also provide a boot from USB device option. This is more true of newer systems, however a BIOS update may provide this ability to you laptop. Firewire drives may be looked upon as SCSI devices by the system when booting...not too certain of this. Either way, you will need to enter the BIOS to change the boot order when accessing boot devices other than C: as was mentioned.

[130dB]

Otherwise, you will have to adjust the BIOS everytime you want to switch between internal and external.

One of the function keys should bring up a boot menu to select boot device during startup if you want to deviate from your normal boot sequence.

[nlavers]

Thank for the info. everyone,

I have done some reading with different searches and a lot of people say it is not yet possible to put a Win XP OS on an External and boot it yet???

I read this from a few forums...

Quotes..

“There is plenty to stop you.
Microsoft has yet to offer an install to USB or Firewire drives. You can however install LINUX to such drives.
Don't like this Windows limitation? Call them up”
--------------------------
“And they never will
This would make it too easy to use one copy of Windows on multiple machines -- and they would not get the extra bucks.”

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“There's a program called Casper XP which will clone your hard drive to an external or internal seperate drive. Exactly, everthing, Windows, all your programs, EVERYTHING.

Though, using a usb hard drive wouldn't be too good, it would take forever to load, and it's really not possible to boot from an (USB or Firewire) external drive yet, and since you're using a notebook hard drive, and that's not the same type of HD in your external, so they're not interchangable.

LaCie makes a new external SATA drive, which has the advantage over USB and Firewire of being as fast and sometimes faster than an internal drive. This drive you can boot from (I moved my entire system to my external SATA and deleted my internal drive for storage). They make a PCMIA card to connect it to your PC with a SATA port."

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I am confused... is this still possible to do??

Thanks.... Nelson

[itsplayed]

You may be right and this may be a limitation of Windows XP when dealing with externals. If your using Windows 98/ME, this limitation is not present. More research is needed to give a definitive answer...I will look into this further. I am aware of cloning software such as Casper, but it's not exactly the same thing as what your trying to do. You may be left with just upgrading your internal drive and setting it up to dual/triple boot. All may not be lost however, I just ran across this promising article of booting and running Windows XP, from all things, a USB Flash drive!
http://www.greghughes.net/rant/Insta...lashDrive.aspx