1. Can a system be booted from a USB hard drive?
Have an HP going on 4 years old and planning for the
unexpected head crash. Would like to know if when
I install a new 200 Gig Maxtor USB drive can I make
it bootable (just in case). The system already has a
second drive but that drive only has storage of files.

The other alternative is to remove the second storage
drive and make it the USB drive. Install the new 200 Gig
drive as the second disk drive to the system and make it
bootable.

2. If it is possible, what else do I need to put on it
in the way of OS. If the original drive goes out, the
only other thing I need is BACKUP. And I assume for that
to work, I need at least some part of the OS. What do
you need for stand alone backup to run?

3. Also, the original drive has a partition with recovery
files on it. Exactly what good are these files to me
now. I assume that when any updates are applied, they
do not go into that partition. Even if they are, if that
drive goes out chances the files would be useless to me
anyway.

So, all I really want to know is, since I do regular backups,
what files do I need on the bootable drive to use MS Backup.

TIA

> 1. Can a system be booted from a USB hard drive?

Depends.

[[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.]]

[[Windows as it exists today is currently not optimized to run as an
installed operating system from USB attached mass-storage or CD. ]]

[[Hard disk drives shouldn't report themselves as removable media drives
because Windows will not put a page file on a removable media device. ]]
from...
Recommendations for Booting Windows from USB Storage Devices
Updated: August 23, 2004
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device.../usb-boot.mspx

However, this is claimed to work.
http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176

This is supposed to work also.
Windows In Your Pocket | Tom's Hardware
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/09/...n_your_pocket/

No, Microsoft does *NOT* support it.

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In news:Xns982A78D92DA4Cmx5@216.196.97.131,
FuzzyCritter <(E-Mail Removed)> hunted and pecked:
> 1. Can a system be booted from a USB hard drive?
> Have an HP going on 4 years old and planning for the
> unexpected head crash. Would like to know if when
> I install a new 200 Gig Maxtor USB drive can I make
> it bootable (just in case). The system already has a
> second drive but that drive only has storage of files.
>
> The other alternative is to remove the second storage
> drive and make it the USB drive. Install the new 200 Gig
> drive as the second disk drive to the system and make it
> bootable.
>
> 2. If it is possible, what else do I need to put on it
> in the way of OS. If the original drive goes out, the
> only other thing I need is BACKUP. And I assume for that
> to work, I need at least some part of the OS. What do
> you need for stand alone backup to run?
>
> 3. Also, the original drive has a partition with recovery
> files on it. Exactly what good are these files to me
> now. I assume that when any updates are applied, they
> do not go into that partition. Even if they are, if that
> drive goes out chances the files would be useless to me
> anyway.
>
> So, all I really want to know is, since I do regular backups,
> what files do I need on the bootable drive to use MS Backup.
>
> TIA