Can not boot once USB 2.0 external hard drive installed on Windows XP

[Rudy Davis]

Hi all,

I installed an external Western Digital in an external USB 2.0 case to
my Compaq computer yesterday. The hard drive (once formatted) works
fine once I plug it into the system and I can use it as an extra drive
which is great.

However if I "REBOOT" the Windows XP machine, it hangs after memory
test and will not continue to boot. If I unplug or poweroff the
external USB 2.0 hard drive, booting continues fine.

The guy below had exactly the same problem as me back in 2002 but I
did not see any replies.

Any ideas ?

Thank you,
Rudy
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From: Anthony Bertorelli ([email protected])
Subject: Maxtor USB hard drive problem
This is the only article in this thread
View: Original Format
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
Date: 2002-01-11 18:40:11 PST


I recently purchased an external USB hard drive for
backup purposes.
The USB drive is actually USB2, but it is backward compatable with
the
older standard. I'm not really concerned about speed, as this is
a
backup drive.

The problem is, if the USB hard drive is connected to the computer,
the computer will not boot. It will hang at the end of the memory
test. I have tried several different USB ports, I've looked
through
various settings in my BIOS, and have even formatted the drive with
NTFS (I'm using Windows XP).

The hard drive *does* work, I just have to disconnect it from the
computer whenever I have to reboot. Then when the computer
boots,
reconnect the external drive. Is this normal? I'd like to
leave it
connected to the computer if I can.

I can't find anything on Maxtor's Knowledge Base, and nothing remotely
coming close on Google's archive. Any insights will be
appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Hi all,

I installed an external Western Digital in an external USB 2.0 case to
my Compaq computer yesterday. The hard drive (once formatted) works
fine once I plug it into the system and I can use it as an extra drive
which is great.

However if I "REBOOT" the Windows XP machine, it hangs after memory
test and will not continue to boot. If I unplug or poweroff the
external USB 2.0 hard drive, booting continues fine.

The guy below had exactly the same problem as me back in 2002 but I
did not see any replies.

Any ideas ?

Thank you,
Rudy

The problem is that USB-boot is done by the BIOS. There are basically
three alternatives:

1. Does not work, and ignores USB boot device
2. Does not work and hangs
3. Does work

Also depends on the USB device.

What you can try is to see whether your BIOS allows you to give
different prioities to USB-boot or external-boot or the like.
Then make sure it is tried after the internal HDDs.

Arno