320 GB HARD DRIVE...Primary Drive? Other drives also.....

[Guest]

I currently had a problem where my hard drive wouldn't boot and after
attempting install for over a week from the XP CD, I've decided to buy a new
hard drive and set my other drives as slaves.

My question is this...

I am looking to purchase a 320GB hard drive and have 2 slave drives (250GB
and 200GB). Obviously I use a lot of storage space. I may not need to use
both hard drives as slaves at once, but I need to save data from those drives.

Are there any advantages/disadvantages to getting an internal drive or an
external drive? I'm interested in getting an external drive, and was
wondering if i'd be able to install Windows XP Pro onto that drive and hook
up my other drives as internal SLAVE drives. Any suggestions,
recommondations, or comments would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Mike

 

[Guest]

BTW.....the hard drives ae made by Western Digital......and the internal
drive would be SATA.

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

No Windows operating system can be installed on
an external drive. External drives are designed for
backups and file storage only. Windows must be
installed on an internal drive.

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User
Microsoft Newsgroups

Be Smart! Protect Your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/default.mspx

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

:

| I currently had a problem where my hard drive wouldn't boot and after
| attempting install for over a week from the XP CD, I've decided to buy a new
| hard drive and set my other drives as slaves.
|
| My question is this...
|
| I am looking to purchase a 320GB hard drive and have 2 slave drives (250GB
| and 200GB). Obviously I use a lot of storage space. I may not need to use
| both hard drives as slaves at once, but I need to save data from those drives.
|
| Are there any advantages/disadvantages to getting an internal drive or an
| external drive? I'm interested in getting an external drive, and was
| wondering if i'd be able to install Windows XP Pro onto that drive and hook
| up my other drives as internal SLAVE drives. Any suggestions,
| recommondations, or comments would be greatly appreciated!
|
| Thanks,
| Mike

 

[Anna]

| I currently had a problem where my hard drive wouldn't boot and after
| attempting install for over a week from the XP CD, I've decided to buy a
new
| hard drive and set my other drives as slaves.
|
| My question is this...
|
| I am looking to purchase a 320GB hard drive and have 2 slave drives
(250GB
| and 200GB). Obviously I use a lot of storage space. I may not need to
use
| both hard drives as slaves at once, but I need to save data from those
drives.
|
| Are there any advantages/disadvantages to getting an internal drive or
an
| external drive? I'm interested in getting an external drive, and was
| wondering if i'd be able to install Windows XP Pro onto that drive and
hook
| up my other drives as internal SLAVE drives. Any suggestions,
| recommondations, or comments would be greatly appreciated!
|
| Thanks,
| Mike

No Windows operating system can be installed on
an external drive. External drives are designed for
backups and file storage only. Windows must be
installed on an internal drive.

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User
Microsoft Newsgroups

Be Smart! Protect Your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/default.mspx

Mike:
Carey is correct, of course, in that you cannot *directly* install XP onto a
USB external hard drive. I should add that I've seen postings on various
newsgroups as well as some commentary on certain websites that this can be
done. However, neither I nor my colleagues have ever been able to do so.

You can, however, use a disk imaging program, e.g., Symantec's Norton Ghost,
Acronis True Image, and similar programs, to clone a copy of the XP OS from
your internal HD to the EHD. The OS will not be bootable from the EHD
(although, again there have been reports that this can be done), but the
contents of that drive could be cloned back to the internal drive for
restoration purposes and that internal drive will be bootable.

Obviously there's an advantage to using an external hard drive rather than
an internal one for backup purposes since the external drive will be
physically detached from the computer except during those relatively short
periods when cloning is in process or you're backing up some files.
Anna

 

[Bob Harris]

I have heard of people with portable PCs trying to make an image on an
external hard drive and boot from it. This may be possible on modern
motherboards. But mine (circa 2003) is too old and can only boot from
selected removable media (ZIP, floppy), but not USB or firewire. So, first
check your motherboard manual, or enter the BIOS setup and look for an
option like boot from external hard drive or boot form USB hard drive or
similar. If you find such an option, then you might be able to trick XP
into booting from the hard drive, if you can get XP onto the external had
drive. However you probably will not be able to get XP to install directly
on the hard external drive, since the XP installer looks for internal hard
drives. Instead, you will need to install on an internal drive, then clone
to an external drive, then play with the bios boot order and maybe also with
making the external drive have an "active" partition. Non-Microsoft
programs like GHOST, TrueImage, Partition Magic, Disk Director might be
necessary for some steps. If it can be done, it won't be easy.

It would be far simpler to install on an internal disk, then use the
external disks for backup or saving large user files.

Also, think about partitioning the disks. 200-320 Gig is a lot of space to
maintain (i.e., chksk, defrag, backup, searching). Especially try to
separate XP and programs from user data, in case you ever need to reload XP.

 

[Lee Chapelle]

You can, however, use a disk imaging program, e.g., Symantec's Norton
Ghost, Acronis True Image, and similar programs, to clone a copy of the XP
OS from your internal HD to the EHD. The OS will not be bootable from the
EHD (although, again there have been reports that this can be done

I don't know why it wouldn't be doable, provided your BIOS has the
appropriate boot options for selection. I've booted a sys'ed USB memory card
to a dos prompt.

Lee

 

[ByTor]

I currently had a problem where my hard drive wouldn't boot and after
attempting install for over a week from the XP CD, I've decided to buy a new
hard drive and set my other drives as slaves.

My question is this...

I am looking to purchase a 320GB hard drive and have 2 slave drives (250GB
and 200GB). Obviously I use a lot of storage space. I may not need to use
both hard drives as slaves at once, but I need to save data from those drives.

Are there any advantages/disadvantages to getting an internal drive or an
external drive? I'm interested in getting an external drive, and was
wondering if i'd be able to install Windows XP Pro onto that drive and hook
up my other drives as internal SLAVE drives. Any suggestions,
recommondations, or comments would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Mike

What are the specs to your MotherBoard?? Just worked on a friends Hell
machine and she impulsivly ran out and bought 2 harddrives and came to
find out that she only has one primary IDE controller (2 burners
attached) on the Mobo & 2 SATA..........Hmmmmmm, she shoulda called me
first.... ;0)

Call me old fashioned but I would rather not use external drives, I use
removable draws & switch drives when I may need specific ones...Of
course if you don't have the room due to lack of 5 1/2 space than that's
not an option......

I agree with Carey's feedback on externals though as far as OS's......

I have 18 drives spread through my system and as Bob mentioned I also
use a partitioning scheme for ease of maintanence.....

BTW: What type of HD did you have that was giving you problems? Is there
a disk utility for it to run a diagnostic? Sometimes boot sectors become
corrupt and a simple low level will write zeros to the beginning & end
or entire drive.......Just a thought.