Bootable external USB hard drive

[LemonJello]

I would like suggestions on how I might go about creating a bootable
external usb hard drive.

I have a notebook with no floppy or CD drive (I mean, I have these but
let's consider that I don't). The notebook does support boot up via
USB. I've been successful creating a bootable USB Memory Key but I
can't pack an image of a hard drive into a memory key. What I'd like
to do is setup my notebook to boot directly off the external USB hard
drive. I know it's probably impossible to boot up in Windows XP but
how about in DOS or PC DOS?

I would like to boot off my 200GB USB external hard drive (which
contains ghost.exe) and ghost my entire notebook's drive. As I said,
my notebook's BIOS does support boot via USB.

How can I create a bootable external USB hard drive?

Thanks

 

[Edward W. Thompson]

Pretty simple really, boot using an MSDOS bootable floppy, preferably with
MSDOS Ver 7 (circa WINSE, downloadable from www.bootdisk.com) and at the
command prompt type 'sys x:' where x is the drive letter of the usb-hdd. You
may already know but if your fixed HDD is formatted NTFS you wont be able to
read/write to it from DOS. You can download and install 'ntfsdos' that will
allow you wo read the ntfs volumes from DOS. The other 'reminder' is DOS
has a volume size limitation. I partitioned my usb-hdd to provide a 5GB
bootable DOS partition, works for me.

 

[Jetro]

Means FAT16 has the volume size limit of 2GB.

 

[LemonJello]

Edward,

That solution has one problem, I don't have a floppy (nor CD-ROM). I
do, however, have an internet connection, and 1 usb port. This is the
challenge!

 

[Edward W. Thompson]

Well not too much of a challenge, at least I think not. The most straight
forward way is simply to go to Explorer and format the drive and transfer
the DOS OS from there in the same way as you would create a bootable floppy.
You can then create or transfer to the USB HDD any dos utilities you wish
plus write a config.sys and autoexec.bat file using notepad.

Alternatively download the requisite dos system files (msdos.sys, io.sys and
command.com plus sys.com) and you could transfer the dos system files (sys
x without going through the format stage as you would need to do (at least
I think so) if you use Explorer.

 

[Nathan McNulty]

Also, depending on your chipset, Windows Setup may offer to install on
your USB Hard Drive. It is worth a shot to see if it works for you.
This whole thing seems pointless because what kind of laptop does not
have a CD-Rom or Floppy drive? How in the world are you supposed to
install Windows on a computer like that?

 

[LemonJello]

OK, I think we're getting somewhere. But what about usb drivers?
Doesn't the boot up process need to have usb drivers loaded to
recognize this exernal drive? Where would I find such drivers and
would the drivers be machine/computer specific?

Also, I'm thinking if there isn't a "chicken before the egg" problem:
you can't mount a usb HD unless a usb driver is loaded; can't load a
usb driver because the driver is on the usb HD being mounted.

 

[Nathan McNulty]

What you want to do is impossible if your BIOS does not support booting
from USB devices. The "drivers" are built into the BIOS on computers
that work that way. Without a floppy or CD ROM drive, it is NOT
possible to boot off an external drive (assuming your BIOS does not
support booting from USB devices). Intel i865/i875 Chipsets fully
support booting from USB and the proper BIOS can utilize this.

 

[Edward W. Thompson]

My understanding was that your laptop bios allowed you to boot from a usb
hdd. If I am not correct then you cannot boot from an external drive. If I
am right in my understanding then you don't need usb drivers, they are
embedded in the chipset.