Re: External HD for Booting up

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Anna wrote:
"El Quixote" <elquixote@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:OK6qpdNOFHA.904@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Shenan & Anna,

thanks for the interest in solving my questions/doubts on this matter. Perhaps I did not explain or conveyed my needs fully, I know about the dificulty in using an external usb/firewire hdd for the purpose in mind, I thought I explained that I would like to use a *regular 3.5 internal* hdd using an adapter box and connecting it to a usb or firewire port?? and having a second fully operational hdd?? after setting the Bios to boot from it?? is that possible at all?? I bought an external usb/firewire before and found out the hard way that it can not take winxp at all, I do want to use it for backup and storage, but also to run my laptop from it if at all possible.

Thanks again,

EQ 



Anna's initial response (slightly revised)...

Re: the OP's case, the most practical course of action for him to take at
this point would be to simply use a disk imaging program, e.g.,
Ghost, True Image, to routinely clone the contents of his laptop HD
(note it's functional at this point) to a USB/Firewire external hard
drive for backup purposes. Then, should the need arise, he can
re:clone the contents back from that EHD to his laptop's drive and
the system would be restored & bootable. And should the laptop's
drive be mechanically/electronically defective and thus unusable, he
could simply replace the defective drive by removing the cloned HD

from its enclosure and installing it in his laptop. 


Shenan's response...

True - An external drive and consistent backup of data is what is really called for here. (snip)
Obtaining an imaging application and an external USB drive that is as large/larger than the laptop's drive and regularly (weekly perhaps) imaging the laptop could save tons of time in the event something bad happens - and when combined with normal backup procedures for data >>> (like to CD/DVD on a nightly basis) - the user should seldom have a problem that would cause them to panic.



EQ:
First of all, I'm not at all clear why you state "I know about the dificulty (sic) in using an external usb/firewire hdd for the purpose in mind...". What difficulty are you talking about? There's no "difficulty" in using a USB/Firewire EHD for backup purposes that I'm aware of. As we've previously indicated, you can (using a disk imaging program) simply clone the contents of your internal HD to the EHD for backup purposes. It is true that you will not be able to boot directly from the EHD, but you can clone back the contents of that drive to your internal drive should the need arise for restoration purposes. Not a particularly time-consuming process. Or should the laptop's internal drive go to "hard drive heaven" (or, more likely "hell"!), you can simply remove the cloned HD from its enclosure and install it in the laptop to replace the original defunct drive. In any event, I assume the restoration or replacement of your internal HD would *not* be an everyday occurrence so I wouldn't think you would find this a particularly onerous process.

As to your idea of using "a *regular 3.5 internal* hdd using an adapter box and connecting it to a usb or firewire port", it's another option, but one that I'm not particularly fond of. I assume you're referring to those adapters that allow a HD to be used as a USB device, although I'm not at all sure what you mean by an "adapter box". First of all, it means always handling a bare drive while plugging it into a USB port. Secondly, the price of those devices are comparable to that of a USB EHD enclosure. Thirdly, the experience we had with those devices in a USB 1.1 environment wasn't very good. We found them flaky and problem-prone and strongly recommended against their use. I have heard that the 2.0 devices don't seem to have those former problems. Finally, understand that these devices will *still* not allow you to boot to the HD since the HD will *still* be a USB device.
Anna


Anna:
Dificulty in using an EHD in my case, means I can not use it for the purpose that I bought the ehd for: using it for an OS based second HDD as discussed here has I was used to using it on a desktop enviroment (not a ehd, but rather about 6 hdd's all with different OS's), so I thought, why not use that concept with my laptop?? (one hdd, not 6!!), hence the idea to buy an internal hdd, load the OS and go from there), but it seems that I can not do this, so, looks like I will use my ehd for backup and extra storage, instead of spending some extra oney in buying the internal hdd and it's hdd enclosure (adapter box in my previous rumblings), $29.99 at your local CompUsa store (on this week's sales flyer). Hope this clarifies my previous post.
Thanks for the help,

EQ
.

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