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

Anna,

Of course putting the internal disk into a USB enclosure and the external
disk inside the laptop wouldn't make a difference to the problem - they are
currently identical in contents.

This is indeed not what I was talking about when I was talking of swapping
them. What I mean was that on this laptop if you remove 2 screws you can
pull the disk out. If my spare disk was SATA and I obtained the little bit
of plastic that attaches to the end of the disk to enable me to pull it out
easily I could swap the disk that is inside the computer, using the provided
disk during the day and my own disk out of hours.

Apart from the fact I bought the wrong disk and am not sure I can find a USB
enclosure that takes SATA to prepare the spare disk, I can see a couple of
problems with this solution:

1) I am not sure the SATA connection is meant to be used to pull disks in
and out several hundred times a year over the next 3 years

2) Having one disk or the other inside the laptop means that a little bit
more planning is needed to share things between the 2 disks. I can use
network drives or a USB attached disk to do this but it means planning it
before the disk is taken out rather than just getting it from the disk when
needed. I suppose this could be helped by synchronisation software, though.

Any comments appreciated.

Subsidiary question: is there a way to edit the registry that is stored on
my E: drive (the USB drive)? The situation is that the E: drive is a copy of
the C: drive a few days ago (a partition copy). If I could change all
references to C: to references to E: on that registry on the E: drive then
it would be consistent to boot from, wouldn't it?
"Anna" <myname@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:u$f6P64UHHA.528@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


"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



.

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