Re: Booting XP from external USB drive - change C drive?



"Olivier" <oliviersaurin@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:O8cJyR1UHHA.3652@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
: What I want to do is: Boot my laptop from an external drive so that I
have a completely different Windows installation when I boot from the
USB drive
: than when I boot from the internal drive. The reason is that this is
a
work laptop and I want to be able to keep work and personal things
separate so I could reboot on the USB drive after office hours and get
my own system.
:
I have done everything that needed doing to copy my current partition
from the C drive to the USB drive and this is bootable. I expected
somehow that if I booted from the external drive it would become the
primary drive, but obviously not. So what happens is that it starts
booting from the USB
drive and very quickly its registry tells it to start programs from C:
so I
don't end up with a different system at all!
:
: I am wondering if it is possible to assign drive C to another letter
and
: then the USB drive to drive C early enough in the boot process. How
would you go about it?
:
: Thanks in advance
:
: Olivier


"Ron Sommer" <rsommer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ucigID2UHHA.920@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
An operating system gives drives drive letters.
Usually the active drive gets the operating system installed on it and
becomes C.
The operating system on the laptop is on C and the operating system on
the
USB drive is on C.
The boot.ini file uses disk and partition numbers to determine which
partition to boot.

How are you switching the drive boot order to choose between the USB
and the
laptop drives?
--
Ronald Sommer


"Olivier" <oliviersaurin@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OaWV5p2UHHA.4076@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I expected the operating system on the USB drive to end up being on C,
but it's not. The internal drive remains C with the 'works' Windows XP
and the USB drive remains E.

To boot from the USB disk I changed the boot device order in the BIOS
setting to boot from USB before booting from internal disk. In other
words to boot from the USB drive I connect it before powering on and to
boot from the internal drive I power on without the USB drive connected.
Or a least that was the idea.

I'm after another way of doing it which would allow me to have two
separate working environments so that I can experiment with the 'home'
(USB) drive we've never been able to boot an XP OS from a USB/Firewire
EHD. And, I might add, we've never come across a single confirmed &
documented report where this capability was achieved and was without
consequence on the work (internal) drive.


"Anna" <myname@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:O8ksKg3UHHA.5108@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Olivier:
Over the years there have been many newsgroup contributors and others who
have claimed to have booted the XP OS from a USB external HDD. Usually
their claim is couched in phrases like "as long as the motherboard's BIOS
supports this capability", or some such. All I can say is that we've
worked with a large variety of motherboards that presumably provided this
"capability" but we've never been able to boot an XP OS from a
USB/Firewire EHD. And, I might add, we've never come across a single
confirmed & documented report where this capability was achieved and was
repeatable.

Having said this, you might want to take a look at this fairly recent
Fred Langa article where Fred purports to have come up with a process to
achieve this "bootability". See
http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticleSrc.jhtml?articleID=177102101

Also, a poster to one of the MS XP newsgroups claimed that he too has
come up with a methodology to do this as well. See
http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176

No doubt a Google search will also reveal a good deal of information on
this issue.

I really don't know any practical way to meet your objective. We have
experimented with a few eSATA (external) laptop CardBus adapters so as to
make a direct SATA-to-SATA connection from a SATA external enclosure to
the laptop's CardBus slot, but we've not be able to effect a boot using
those devices as well.

It has puzzled us why laptop/notebook manufacturers have not (at least up
the present time) produced their wares with an eSATA port, along with the
usual USB port. To our mind this would be an enormous leap forward since
it would provide the capability you and many others are looking for when
using a laptop/notebook. (A few desktop machines are finally coming on
market with at least one eSATA port). BTW, we have heard that ASUS will
shortly be releasing a notebook with an eSATA port.
Anna


"Olivier" <oliviersaurin@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:eO$9Tm3UHHA.3652@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Anna,

Thank you for this reply. I will check the links you provide. The problem
is not with booting as I think it starts booting from the external drive
(but I might be mistaken). The problem is that the registry on the USB
drive also refers to the C: drive so than it starts loading from there.

I thought maybe I could do a global replace of C: to E: in the registry
files on the USB drive.

As an alternative I was thinking I could swap the disk instead (although
it would be good to have both at the same time). That's when I discovered
the laptop disk is SATA and the external disk is IDE.


Olivier:
I really don't think "swapping" the HDDs would be a viable solution, even
setting aside the fact that one is PATA and the other is SATA. Even if both
had the same interface it wouldn't make a difference in that you would be
able to boot to the USBHDD enclosure containing your internal laptop's HDD.
At least to the best of my knowledge.

And the awkwardness of it all even if it could be done would be an
overwhelming disadvantage, would it not, assuming you were doing this on
some sort of routine basis?
Anna


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Boot Problem
    ... Was either disk set up as a Microsoft dynamic disk? ... Do not change the boot sector signature. ... I ensure all OK by swapping over drives. ... installing XP as it insisted there was no drive to install itself on! ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: NTLDR is missing
    ... Make sure that there are no disks in any removable drives when you boot. ... NTLDR is missing, why does it happen? ... Computer hard disk drive is not properly setup in BIOS. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics)
  • Re: [SLE] Problems with initrd after mkinitrd
    ... A disk can have three real heads and report a dozen or a hundred! ... > natural metric for partitioning drives that use LBA. ... > - One, less frequent, is the failure of some of the cloned drives to boot ...
    (SuSE)
  • Re: Grub hangs - two hard drives and a CD
    ... > What you wrote is all based on a wrong assumption that grub numbers drives ... > that the BIOS will call to boot an OS. ... The Bios calls to read disk require the register DL to ...
    (comp.os.linux.setup)
  • Re: XP Boot Problem
    ... Boot into safe mode, turn on boot loging, see what is causing the hangup ... It depends how comfortable you are with opening your laptop & reseating ... I always have a couple of bootable hard drives with all my ... the disk in general -- it ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.setup_deployment)