Dual boot with external hard drive

Hi I am rinning Vista on my home pc and use 3 external hard drives is it
possable to install XP on one of them and how can I boot from That drive (
the dreves are usb) Thanks

Hi,

No, you can't install XP on an external USB drive and boot from it. That is
not supported in either XP or in Vista.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

"David.Anthony" <> wrote in message
news:1CCBCE08-1D6F-4D3A-8AD1-...
> Hi I am rinning Vista on my home pc and use 3 external hard drives is it
> possable to install XP on one of them and how can I boot from That drive
> ( the dreves are usb) Thanks

Hi Rick-

I beg to differ. My pc has an option in the bios to boot from usb and it works quite well, I have dual booted vista on ide and xp pro on external usb hd for 6 months now...

C



"David.Anthony" <> wrote in message news:1CCBCE08-1D6F-4D3A-8AD1-...
> Hi I am rinning Vista on my home pc and use 3 external hard drives is it
> possable to install XP on one of them and how can I boot from That drive (
> the dreves are usb) Thanks
>

Rick is correct . You cannot boot an OS from an EXTERNAL drive. Period.

--
Peter

Please Reply to Newsgroup for the benefit of others
Requests for assistance by email can not and will not be acknowledged.

"Cheddarhead" <> wrote in message news:55D2CA80-0B35-4037-9718-...
Hi Rick-

I beg to differ. My pc has an option in the bios to boot from usb and it works quite well, I have dual booted vista on ide and xp pro on external usb hd for 6 months now...

C



"David.Anthony" <> wrote in message news:1CCBCE08-1D6F-4D3A-8AD1-...
> Hi I am rinning Vista on my home pc and use 3 external hard drives is it
> possable to install XP on one of them and how can I boot from That drive (
> the dreves are usb) Thanks
>

On Sun, 19 Aug 2007 00:00:53 -0400, "Peter Foldes" <>
wrote:

>Rick is correct . You cannot boot an OS from an EXTERNAL drive. Period.

Depends how you define an external drive. If some REMOVABLE BOOT drive
that can be slid in and out of a drawer/cage and you set BIOS to seek
accordingly there's no reason you can't have any number of different
OS's each on their own removable hard drive to boot from. So if you
wanted you could have a small drive to slip in and out of a system
configured to be X, Y or Z OS and as far as the computer knew it would
only be aware of the drive currently in the system.

You can not presently have a system with OS X installed on boot drive
(C) then have OS Y on an external drive part of the same system and
boot to Drive X (some connected external drive) since INT 13h wouldn't
be present on the external drive X IF is was part of a larger system
expecting to be booted from C. However in the first case INT 13h IS
present relative to whatever OS is getting booted since as far as the
BIOS is concerned it only "sees" the one drive currently in the drawer
and will effortlessly boot from it all other things being equal.

Something for the future:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device.../usb-boot.mspx

erh wrong,,, you can boot from an external and even a USB drive.

"Peter Foldes" <> wrote in message news:...
Rick is correct . You cannot boot an OS from an EXTERNAL drive. Period.

--
Peter

Please Reply to Newsgroup for the benefit of others
Requests for assistance by email can not and will not be acknowledged.

"Cheddarhead" <> wrote in message news:55D2CA80-0B35-4037-9718-...
Hi Rick-

I beg to differ. My pc has an option in the bios to boot from usb and it works quite well, I have dual booted vista on ide and xp pro on external usb hd for 6 months now...

C



"David.Anthony" <> wrote in message news:1CCBCE08-1D6F-4D3A-8AD1-...
> Hi I am rinning Vista on my home pc and use 3 external hard drives is it
> possable to install XP on one of them and how can I boot from That drive (
> the dreves are usb) Thanks
>

"Peter Foldes" wrote:
> Rick is correct . You cannot boot an OS from an EXTERNAL drive.
> Period.

Without some serious hacks, that is true of USB and FireWire
external drives. But with an eSATA cable, SATA hard drives
can be housed in external enclosures and connected via eSATA
cables so that they behave EXACTLY as internal hard drives and
are thus bootable. Here is just one manufacturer of eSATA
enclosures for SATA hard drives:
http://www.kingwin.com/product_pages/jt35ebk.asp
These enclosures have modular ("wall wart") power supplies
and built-in cooling fans.

Kingwin (and online retailers) also sell adapters to connect
motherboard SATA connectors to a backpanel eSATA
connector to enable connection to an external eSATA
enclosure via an eSATA cable:
http://www.kingwin.com/product_pages/esac_02.asp

With such eSATA enclosures, one can have the bootability and
speed of internal SATA hard drives and the portability of an
external hard drive.

*TimDaniels*

* Peter Foldes:
> Rick is correct . You cannot boot an OS from an EXTERNAL drive. Period.
>

That's not entirely true. Timothy Daniels is correct in his post.


-Michael

I answered the OP's question. In his situation and what he wanted to do and accomplish., I answered correctly.

Besides a hack or a USB enclosure there is sill a reason (s) why you cannot boot(not recommended) from an external drive.

I stand by what I said.

--
Peter

Please Reply to Newsgroup for the benefit of others
Requests for assistance by email can not and will not be acknowledged.

"MICHAEL" <> wrote in message news:...
>
>
> * Peter Foldes:
>> Rick is correct . You cannot boot an OS from an EXTERNAL drive. Period.
>>
>
> That's not entirely true. Timothy Daniels is correct in his post.
>
>
> -Michael

* Peter Foldes:
> I answered the OP's question. In his situation and what he wanted to do and accomplish., I answered correctly.
>
> Besides a hack or a USB enclosure there is sill a reason (s) why you cannot boot(not recommended) from an external drive.
>
> I stand by what I said.

You can stand by your statement all you want-
but, you would still *not* be totally correct.

You said: "You cannot boot an OS from an EXTERNAL drive. Period."

Such an absolute that is *not* absolutely correct.

Therefore, you were wrong.


-Michael