Booting XP from a USB2 external hard drive.

[gshapiro]

I've always been curious as to whether it is possible to boot up XP
from a USB2 hard drive. So I decided to give it a whirl.

It appears that installing XP to such a drive is not possible. The
install does not give me the option to install to such a device.

So I proceeded to Plan #2... Take a drive image of my boot/system
drive and restore it to the USB2 drive.

After accomplishing this I proceeded to boot from my USB2 device. Yes,
my BIOS supports this.

Upon booting I noticed something strange. I got the progress bar at
the bottom of the screen that you normally get when booting from the XP
CD or from a CD that contains Windows PE. This is the DOS looking
progress bar that from a CD let's you load drivers by hitting F6.
Except in this case only the progress bar was there, nothing else. I
even tried F6 at this point but nothing happened.

OK. So after the bar completely filled in, which happened real quick, I
got the XP boot screen. I though, WOW, it does work.

Then after a few seconds, BSOD, Stop: x'7B'.

I suppose I technically did boot from a USB2 device. But of course the
BSOD is now the problem.

Does anyone have any ideas how to get by the BSOD? The fact that I got
this far seems to indicate that the USB drivers are loaded, or are
they? I tried booting in safe mode and saw various drivers being
loaded which also seems to indicate that XP was reading from the USB2
drive.

I am trying this just to see if it can be done. The fact that I got
this far seems to me that it might be possible to do. I am kind of at
an impasse at this point as to what to look at. Any help will be
appreciated.

btw.. A suggestion to do a Repair on the USB2 Windows Installation was
suggested. Nice idea but the Repair facility does not present my USB
Windows drive as a Repair option.

 

[R. McCarty]

It's a reoccurring topic and some say it can be done, but I've never
seen it accomplished. What will work is an External SATA drive.
Even if you could get it running - the disk performance isn't going
to satisfy you. The throughput is similar to UDMA Mode 2. XP is
designed so that it will not Boot/Install/Repair from a drive that is
defined as "Removable". When you tried to boot from the USB 2
external did you disable/remove the normal "Fixed" drive in the PC?
Likely, the RDisk assignment in Boot.Ini wasn't correct and the
boot to USB failed.

Just search around the Web for XP boot from USB. If you do
manage to get a successful boot - post back the details.

 

[gshapiro]

Update***

Played around with boot.ini. I figured my USB2 drive was the second
drive so I changed the parameters that point to the 2nd drive. Booting
this way just got me into XP on my IDE drive for some reason.

I then just used my 'normal' boot.ini (points to my first disk) and I
got the usual BSOD again.

When booting off of my USB drive in Safe Mode, the last driver that is
loaded (last that appears on the screen at least) is agpcpq.sys. I
read that this is the last driver copied before the boot process loads
in the Kernel.

Further reading I found information that suggests that since my USB
boot drive was built from an IDE created system this is the cause of my
problem. Something about the HAL not being correct for a USB boot.

So close, yet so far away. Why do they even bother allowing booting
from a USB device if the world's most popular (or infamous) OS won't
allow it? For Linux???

 

[Guest]

It is possible to do it if you go to
http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20050909/index.html

 

[steetwolf]

I appreciate the link but this is for booting off of a USB device
within a Windows Pre-Installation Environment. In this case using
BartPE. And mainly for a USB flash device.

I have done this already and it is not quite the same as what I am
attempting to do, boot a full blown XP from a USB HD. Booting using a
PE is not the same thing. It is a handy thing to have available. I've
been saved a number of times by using it as a recovery vehicle. But
you are limited as to what you can run although a lot of things can run
from it. But it is not a substitute for a 'real' XP system

What I want to do is something that lots of people do when using all
IDE devices. That is, imaging your XP partition, restoring it to
another IDE drive, and then booting from that. No problems doing this
at all. All I want to do is replace the drive I restore to with a USB
device. Sounds simple and IMO it should be. Seems I've gotten farther
than what the posts I have read seem to indicate.

There isn't much on this subject at all. Lots of links like the one
you posted, but almost none regarding what I am attempting. The ones I
found say you can't even boot from the USB HD although I seem to have
gotten this far.

 

[Richard Urban]

I have not heard of any cases where a person has been able to boot Windows
XP from an external USB drive, and where the person posted "in detail" how
he was able to do it , so others could confirm the process.

I far as I know, it can NOT be done.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Have a look at this thread in windowsxp.hardware:
"Booting XP from any USB device"

 

[Richard Urban]

And the link is......

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

You've got me there! How do I find out the link of a thread found
in a newsgroup? (Ahh, such ignorance!)

 

[Richard Urban]

Aw shucks! My bad. (-:

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Plato]

Played around with boot.ini. I figured my USB2 drive was the second
drive so I changed the parameters that point to the 2nd drive. Booting
this way just got me into XP on my IDE drive for some reason.

IT's because you cant boot from an external usb drive. That's the "some
reason".

 

[jt3]

It is
< I
saw this last night and thought of this thread. Mostly it looks plausible,
so far as I can tell (is that SFAICT? , but requires you get his version
of ntdetect.com by e-mail from him.

 

[steetwolf]

Interesting thread you provided.

While it's a 'fun' thing to try on a rainy day, I was really hoping
that a USB2 drive would boot up exactly like a good ole IDE drive.

Oh well, some things are not meant to be. So sayeth Microsoft.