Re: installing windows xp in external hard drive

I don't have tons of experience with this but that is the way I understand it. Unless they are small self executing programs I don't know how they would run off the USB hard drive. No doubt the folks on Bart's user forums would be able to provide more information on the subject.

John

Timothy Daniels wrote:

Thanks for that explanation, John. As I understand it, then, only
the data files could be *practically* kept on the USB hard drive,
and the installed application programs themselves would have to
be part of the BartPE OS on the RAM stck. True?

*TimDaniels*

"John John (MVP)" wrote:

You can boot from a USB "device". You can boot on a USB floppy
or a USB CD-ROM and install Windows to another non-USB hard
disk when you boot with another device, but at the present time you
cannot install any Windows desktop/server version to a USB hard
disk without hacking the installation files and hacking the way Windows
boots and loads/initializes the USB drivers. You may be able to install
and boot other operating systems to a USB drive but this is not
supported out of the box for Microsoft desktop/server operating
systems, Microsoft does not support this boot method.

As for the RAM stick question I think it would still be able to boot the computer and that you could use the USB drive, you can boot a PE
version on a USB stick, the difference is that when you boot with the
RAM stick you don't need to retrieve and write files to the USB hard
disk while the computer is booting, once the OS on the stick is loaded
if it has USB drivers then it should be able to read write to the USB
hard drive.

You should be able to find information about that on Bart's PE site and user forums, or on the Ultimate Boot Disks for Windows site.

You can get a idea of what needs to be done to install and boot Windows on a USB drive here: http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176

As Bob mentioned in his post, unless someone has very specific needs I don't much see the use of this booting method, not to mention that USB drives are about the slowest hard drives available, performance wise not the best for the operating system.

John

Timothy Daniels wrote:


Interesting. The Dell "Level II" tech reps insisted that their systems
that could boot from USB "devices" could boot from USB hard drives.
But they didn't say *how* to boot them from a USB hard drive. It
appears now that they were saying "if you hack the OS in one of our
USB-bootable systems (and thus void the warranty), the system can
be booted from a USB hard drive".

Does this mean that if one sets the BIOS to boot from a USB RAM
stick that one cannot use USB for a plug-n-play device while that
setting is in effect?

*TimDaniels*

"John John (MVP)" wrote:


No, that won't work, you still need to change the way the USB
stack is initialized.

John

Timothy Daniels wrote:



How about if one installed the OS to an internal hard drive and then
cloned it to an external USB hard drive, or if the internal hard drive
were merely physically moved to the external USB drive enclosure?
IOW, if one separated the installation and bootup procedures - could
the OS on the external USB hard drive be booted without a "whack"?

*TimDaniels*

"John John (MVP)" wrote:



Windows will not install and boot on a USB drive unless you hack the installation. If you do some searching on the net you will find reports of some who have attempted to do this and the reports are mostly ones of
failures or of less than spectacular results. To get this to work you have
to change the way that Windows initializes the USB stack, a main
problem being that the Session Manager creates the pagefile before the
USB stack is fully initialized. It's an installation that isn't supported by
Microsoft, but as I said, if you search the net you will find reports from
some who claim to have done it along with their installation recipe.

John

Timothy Daniels wrote:



By "whack", I believe you mean choosing the option in the BIOS at
startup to boot from USB media. That "whack" would last only until
the next startup. That a USB-linked IDE or SATA hard drive could
boot an OS was confirmed to me by Dell's Tech Support, so I assume
that any motherboard with a BIOS that enables booting from USB
media would also accommodate booting from a USB-connected
external hard drive. But it's not clear that setting the BIOS to boot

from USB would disable unused USB ports from use for plug-n-play


devices. Do you know this to be a fact?

*TimDaniels*


"Bob I" wrote:



Only if you "whack" the ability of Windows to handle USB normally.
In other words you prevent the normal Plug and play of USB and
then the external booting can be used. So you give up a lot of USB's
value for something of limited use.

John wrote:



Really? I've always thought that if we can boot off USB flash drive
we should be able to install Windows on external USB drive (as
long as BIOS supports booting off USB). Maybe I'm wrong.

"R. McCarty" wrote:



Only if the external drives are either SATA or SCSI hosted.
All USB peripherals are seen to Windows as removable. It's
that attribute that prevents installation on USB external drives.

"wannabegeek" wrote:



is it possible to install windows xp in external hard drive and
make works normally as it was install in internal hard drive

please help i am new at this





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