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Booting Windows XP Home From A USB Hard Drive

post #1 of 14
4/18/05 at 1:45am
Thread Starter 
I have a Dell Inspiron 600m. Does anyone know of a How-To that will explain how to install Windows XP Home on a USB hard drive so it can be booted from the USB hard drive? I would like the master boot record to be on the USB hard drive also.

Basically, I want to be able to boot Windows XP Home from my USB hard drive if it is connected and to boot Windows XP Home from the internal hard drive otherwise. I know how to adjust the BIOS so it will do this but I have not been able to figure out how to install Windows XP Home on my USB hard drive so that I can boot from it.

Thanks for any help.

Dave
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post #2 of 14
4/18/05 at 1:53am
How about if you use a program like Norton Ghost to clone your internal drive to the USB drive and then remove anything you don't want from the external drive. You should be able to boot from the USB drive via your BIOS then, since it has a working OS.
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post #3 of 14
4/18/05 at 2:06am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by joseyu
How about if you use a program like Norton Ghost to clone your internal drive to the USB drive and then remove anything you don't want from the external drive. You should be able to boot from the USB drive via your BIOS then, since it has a working OS.
Thanks for the suggestion. I don't actually have Norton Ghost and was hoping to avoid spending anymore money. But perhaps I will need to consider something like that if I can't figure out how to do it another way.

Dave
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post #4 of 14
4/18/05 at 2:27am
You could probably find an OEM copy for less than 20 bucks. Try doing a search on www.pricewatch.com for it.
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post #5 of 14
4/18/05 at 8:58am
You can install a fresh copy of windows xp on the second drive using the same installation disk that you used to install on the first drive (or one that came with you computer - assuming of course that you got one). If its the oem win xp copy, it won't ask you to activate it and you'll have no problem with two win xp copies (I have two on the same drive).

If you want an image copy, you can use a free trial of true image (much better program thatn Ghost IMHO). I believe the trial will let you do a simple 1:1 copy of the drive.

As for the booting configuration, on your second page of the bios screen there will be options for booting configuration. For the setup you want, just put the "USB bootable devices" or something like that above the internal hard drive. There are directions on how to do that on the side column.
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post #6 of 14
4/18/05 at 12:53pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by mich43L
You can install a fresh copy of windows xp on the second drive using the same installation disk that you used to install on the first drive (or one that came with you computer - assuming of course that you got one). If its the oem win xp copy, it won't ask you to activate it and you'll have no problem with two win xp copies (I have two on the same drive).

If you want an image copy, you can use a free trial of true image (much better program thatn Ghost IMHO). I believe the trial will let you do a simple 1:1 copy of the drive.

As for the booting configuration, on your second page of the bios screen there will be options for booting configuration. For the setup you want, just put the "USB bootable devices" or something like that above the internal hard drive. There are directions on how to do that on the side column.
Thanks for the info. I do have the Win XP disk that came with my laptop. I've realized that at this point what I want is a clean install because I've had this laptop for nearly 2 years and I want to start with a clean install that does not have all the extra stuff that I'm not using and all the mistakes I've made along the way with my original install.

I understand how to modify the BIOS.

Somehow, I've messed things up when trying to install XP on my USB drive and I'm not sure what the mistake was. There was some software which came with the USB drive which I purchased from Seagate that was used for formating and making partitions. I did not choose the option which said I was going to boot from the USB drive and maybe that is my problem. I was afraid it would mark my internal hard drive as not bootable since I was telling it that I was going to boot from the USB drive and I actually wanted to be able to boot from both. Maybe I need to go back and redo that step.

Another idea I had was to just pull the internal hard drive from my laptop. That way I could be sure that I did not mess things up on my existing internal hard drive. But then I would wonder if the XP on my USB drive would be able to detect the internal hard drive when it was installed again and be able to mount it or whatever the Windows terminology is for that.

I'm also wondering if the Windows installation on my USB drive would consider the USB drive to be the C drive. I'm not very Windows literate and there is the concern of really messing things up that makes me a little hesitant to just dive in and learn by experimentation.

That is why I was hoping there might be some How-To that would provide a step by step procedure for doing what I want to do.

Dave
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post #7 of 14
4/18/05 at 2:25pm
It's not necessary to use propriatery software such as Segate's because when you start the installation process (boot from the win xp cd) you'll have options to create partitions and format them. Another way to do it, which I suggest, is to boot to your existing OS, plug in the other drive and create and format partitions on the usb HD by going to administrative tasks in control panel.

Don't worry about having them both in while booting to one or installing an OS to the other. Tough since you have a 600m it's very easy to pull the primary hd with the caddy from laptop. Some times windows does confuse the drive names and will hang on boot (because it can't find the c drive) - this sometimes happens when cloning and it's easily fixable by running fixmbr. This won't happen to you since you're performing a clean install.
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post #8 of 14
4/18/05 at 5:09pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by mich43L
It's not necessary to use propriatery software such as Segate's because when you start the installation process (boot from the win xp cd) you'll have options to create partitions and format them. Another way to do it, which I suggest, is to boot to your existing OS, plug in the other drive and create and format partitions on the usb HD by going to administrative tasks in control panel.

Don't worry about having them both in while booting to one or installing an OS to the other. Tough since you have a 600m it's very easy to pull the primary hd with the caddy from laptop. Some times windows does confuse the drive names and will hang on boot (because it can't find the c drive) - this sometimes happens when cloning and it's easily fixable by running fixmbr. This won't happen to you since you're performing a clean install.
I'll try to give my install another shot tonight and see what happens.

Thanks,

Dave
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post #9 of 14
4/18/05 at 8:43pm
I thought there was some kind of limitation that Windows XP could not boot from an external USB drive - something about the boot loader was not compatible with USB.
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post #10 of 14
4/18/05 at 8:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by anettis
I thought there was some kind of limitation that Windows XP could not boot from an external USB drive - something about the boot loader was not compatible with USB.
From what I've been able to tell, the system BIOS must support USB boot for it to work. Some systems have this, some don't. So, if your BIOS supports it, you're good to go.
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post #11 of 14
4/18/05 at 8:59pm
If you have problems booting from the hd on usb, update 600m's bios.
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post #12 of 14
4/18/05 at 10:31pm
Even if the BIOS allows for it I don't think that Windows XP will allow such a configuration. Here is something from MS:

"Current versions of Windows should not be installed to USB hard disk drives because Windows does not support USB hard disk drives as the primary boot device."

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device.../usb-boot.mspx
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post #13 of 14
4/18/05 at 10:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by anettis
Even if the BIOS allows for it I don't think that Windows XP will allow such a configuration. Here is something from MS:

"Current versions of Windows should not be installed to USB hard disk drives because Windows does not support USB hard disk drives as the primary boot device."

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device.../usb-boot.mspx
that is right becuase Windows XP unloads and loads again the USB modules (drivers) when is starting up. so it loses connection with the harddrive and you will get the famous blue screen
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post #14 of 14
4/18/05 at 10:49pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by anettis
Even if the BIOS allows for it I don't think that Windows XP will allow such a configuration. Here is something from MS:

"Current versions of Windows should not be installed to USB hard disk drives because Windows does not support USB hard disk drives as the primary boot device."

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device.../usb-boot.mspx
Did not know that. Most likely because I never tried/needed to boot from a drive on usb. So the boot manager would have to be on the ide HD in order to boot to the one on the usb? If you don't like that configuration, you can get another primary hard drive caddy and easily swap between the prmary hard drives. Or you can get a modular bay hard drive enclosure.
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