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.

 

[Peter]

If you don't have operating system files on the USB drive (such as your OS
per se) you shouldn't have a problem booting with it on; i have one and
sometimes i forget during re-boot and leave it running and it boots just
fine....I don't think you can install XP on an external USB drive anyway, so
i would guess that is not your problem..
SHut it off after your machine shut down (or before) and leave it off until
your system is booted, that is what i do..Don't know what else to tell you..