Dual Boot Installation to External HD

[JB1964]

Are there any known issues with installing a second instance of XP to an
external USB HD? I have found nothing in the discussions that would lead me
to believe otherwise, but I still get a check disk error on the external
drive during installation. I have looked at every post I could find on dual
boot procedures and found nothing on this subject. I've run check disk on
the second drive and everything seems in order. It has two partitions and no
errors on either. Is the USB connection the culprit? Any help is greatly
appreciated!

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Are there any known issues with installing a second instance of XP
to an external USB HD?

Few BIOSes enable booting from a USB device.
If you are using a SATA hard drive, why not use an eSATA
connection to the external box? That would allow booting
and faster data access as well. Search groups.google.com
for "eSATA external" with "Timothy Daniels" as the author
in the past 2 weeks for equipment available.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Sister Mary]

Are there any known issues with installing a second instance of XP to an
external USB HD? I have found nothing in the discussions that would lead
me
to believe otherwise, but I still get a check disk error on the external
drive during installation. I have looked at every post I could find on
dual
boot procedures and found nothing on this subject. I've run check disk on
the second drive and everything seems in order. It has two partitions and
no
errors on either. Is the USB connection the culprit? Any help is greatly
appreciated!

Enter BIOS (Tap F2 or F5)
You will have to navigate your PC's BIOS and locate entry for
Legacy Devices and/or Legacy USB, it maybe under the advanced
option. Once located you have to activate then include it the Boot
sequence. Then XP should be more relaxed about being installed
on an externally connected USB drive.
Once installed you will also have to install a boot manager./loader,
this being a tool that allows you to select which installation to boot
from.

 

[DL]

The basic issue would be whether you have two winxp licences?

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Enter BIOS (Tap F2 or F5)
You will have to navigate your PC's BIOS and locate entry for
Legacy Devices and/or Legacy USB, it maybe under the advanced
option. Once located you have to activate then include it the Boot
sequence. [......]

Yeah. "...include a USB device in the Boot Sequence", uh...
in the "Advanced" option. Got that?

*TimDaniels*

 

[Edward W. Thompson]

Are there any known issues with installing a second instance of XP to an
external USB HD? I have found nothing in the discussions that would lead
me
to believe otherwise, but I still get a check disk error on the external
drive during installation. I have looked at every post I could find on
dual
boot procedures and found nothing on this subject. I've run check disk on
the second drive and everything seems in order. It has two partitions and
no
errors on either. Is the USB connection the culprit? Any help is greatly
appreciated!

Very simply WINXP will not boot from an external USB drive. There have been
some who claim by 'hacking' the OS they have managed to boot WINXP from a
USB drive, however, I have tried and not succeeded. If you 'must' have
WINXP on an external drive then I think esata drives will 'work' as the
system essentially sees these drives in the same way as an internal drive.

 

[Sister Mary]

Enter BIOS (Tap F2 or F5)
You will have to navigate your PC's BIOS and locate entry for
Legacy Devices and/or Legacy USB, it maybe under the advanced
option. Once located you have to activate then include it the Boot
sequence. [......]

Yeah. "...include a USB device in the Boot Sequence", uh...
in the "Advanced" option. Got that?

*TimDaniels*

Re-read it carefully, I did not say "include a USB device"
I told the OP to activate and include *legacy* device/USB.
It will NOT be listed under USB. It is legacy devices and it
first has to be activated. Then a USB dvd can be used to
boot from an XP disc or a USB hard drive with an XP install.
Now go and learn about BIOS then you can join in the thread.

 

[Sister Mary]

Very simply WINXP will not boot from an external USB drive. >snip

Oh yes it can. It just requires reconfiguring *legacy* devices in BIOS

 

[Sister Mary]

Are there any known issues with installing a second instance of XP to an
external USB HD? I have found nothing in the discussions that would lead
me
to believe otherwise, but I still get a check disk error on the external
drive during installation. I have looked at every post I could find on
dual
boot procedures and found nothing on this subject. I've run check disk on
the second drive and everything seems in order. It has two partitions and
no
errors on either. Is the USB connection the culprit? Any help is greatly
appreciated!

As you can see from how the thread has evolved you are getting
conflicting advice.
You can install and boot from a USB device, but the BIOS has to
be reconfigured. In all BIOS settings USB is activated by default.
But the setting you require is *Legacy* device which is DEactivated
by default. It won't be listed under USB, it may have it's own heading
or maybe listed under Advanced depending in your BIOS.
But it is *Legacy* device (Or "Legacy USB") that you have to activate.
Once you have installed XP to USB HDD there are pitfalls you have to
watch out for.
BIOS are configured to scan in a *sequence/order* looking for boot.ini
the usual setting for the scan is first a Floppy drive, if no boot it moves
to the CD/DVD drive, if no boot it then scans next in sequence being
the HDD. It will boot from the first it finds in the sequence, so if you
loaded an XP disk it will boot from that.
To be able to boot from the USB installation of XP, the USB connected
drive has to be activated under *Legacy* devices and then included in
the BIOS boot sequence, but including it in boot sequence you do so
as the last device, so the sequence would run as:
1 - Floppy (If one installed on your PC)
2 - CD/DVD drive
3 - "C" drive/partition as configured on your PC
4 - Legacy device
The problem being with that configuration is your PC will boot from
the C partition and never scan the legacy (USB). So you have to install a
tool that upon boot gives you the option to chose which device to
boot from. The obvious one being Acronis Boot Manager being an
excellent and established tool for the task, but it ain't free.
In google, If you type: boot sequence, boot loaders, boot managers
you should get plenty of results and some freeware options.
Once you have configured your PC you will find XP will install to the
*legacy* activated USB connected hard drive.

Anyone else who is interested, by activating *Legacy* devices in
the BIOS settings you will also be able to boot from an externally
connected USB DVD drive, this maybe of use to laptop owners
or hardware failure etc. But in such circumstance you set the *legacy*
device as first in Boot sequence.

 

[JB1964]

ALL,
I truly appreciate the advice and am trying all aspects. In navigating my
bios, the only entry I could find that was even close to what is suggested
was "enable other boot device". This was disabled by default. I'd like some
feedback from SM if you believe this is referring to legacy systems.

Also, if I'm successful, can I not use windows boot .ini file to delineate
the two different boot options at start up?

I apologize ahead of time for any nub questions I just asked. Thanks again
to EVERYONE!

 

[Sister Mary]

ALL,
I truly appreciate the advice and am trying all aspects. In navigating my
bios, the only entry I could find that was even close to what is suggested
was "enable other boot device".

Try it, if it dosen't do the task, whose BIOS is it?
Check their site for your BIOS configuration

This was disabled by default. I'd like some

feedback from SM if you believe this is referring to legacy systems.

Also, if I'm successful, can I not use windows boot .ini file to delineate
the two different boot options at start up?

I've never done that, but you could try it, but a Boot manager tool makes
it so easy, at boot there is the screen with options and you just select
which to boot from.

 

[John John]

Oh yes it can. It just requires reconfiguring *legacy* devices in BIOS

You can boot from a USB floppy or USB CD-ROM or even USB stick but
booting a full "Windows" installation on a USB hard disk is not a
supported scenario and not one that many have succeeded with! Some have
claimed to be able to do this but when asked for the recipe they all of
a sudden disappear from the discussion! I am not saying that this is
absolutely impossible, but I think it will require a lot more fiddling
than simply changing or reconfiguring the USB legacy devices in the
BIOS. If you search (really hard) on the net you will find reports of
some doing it and how they surmounted the obstacles, but you will also
find more reports of failure than you will of success stories.

I hope that the OP sticks to his or her endeavour and that you stick
with him or her to the end, it will be interesting to see how this
develops and hopefully we can all learn how to successfully install,
boot and run a Windows installation on an external USB drive!

John

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Re-read it carefully, I did not say "include a USB device"
I told the OP to activate and include *legacy* device/USB.
It will NOT be listed under USB. It is legacy devices and it
first has to be activated. Then a USB dvd can be used to
boot from an XP disc or a USB hard drive with an XP install.
Now go and learn about BIOS then you can join in the thread.

Yup. DVD drives surely are "legacy" devices. Makes
complete sense. And then the BIOS will give the user the
option of doing "Advanced" operations, as opposed to
"Retarded" operations, I suppose. How friendly of the BIOS.
Ptoooey!

*TimDaniels*

 

[DL]

But do you have two seperate winxp licences?

 

[Edward W. Thompson]

snip

Ok, perhaps you will now post exactly how to reconfigure the OS to allow
WINXP to boot from a USB drive. Not withstanding two licences, I believe
the OS is owned by MS and you do not have the right to make modifications to
it without the permission of MS. I agree not many observe the legal
niceties so don't let that stop you.

 

[John John]

snip

Ok, perhaps you will now post exactly how to reconfigure the OS to allow
WINXP to boot from a USB drive. Not withstanding two licences, I believe
the OS is owned by MS and you do not have the right to make modifications to
it without the permission of MS. I agree not many observe the legal
niceties so don't let that stop you.

Are you asking me how to do this? I don't know how to do it, it is an
unsupported configuration by Microsoft and as far as I am concerned it
isn't possible to boot a full Windows installation on an external USB
hard drive. I have never even tried to do this and to tell you the
honest truth I wouldn't even bother trying, so don't expect a recipe
from me on how it might be accomplished. That being said, there are
reports of some actually doing it with various levels of reliability or
usability, so I am not yet ready to say that it absolutely can't be
done. Along with the stories of success often comes reports of bugs and
reliability problems, these experiments are definitely for tinkerers
only! No doubt it will eventually be possible to reliably install
Windows on external USB drives, for the time being I am one who will
pass on it.

On a separate but related note I think this *might* be possible with
Windows XP Embedded SP2, but I can't confirm that for sure. I think I
read that somewhere but I could be completely mistaken, perhaps it was
for USB sticks only, I don't remember.

John

 

[Plato]

Are there any known issues with installing a second instance of XP to an
external USB HD? I have found nothing in the discussions that would lead me
to believe otherwise, but I still get a check disk error on the external
drive during installation. I have looked at every post I could find on dual
boot procedures and found nothing on this subject. I've run check disk on
the second drive and everything seems in order. It has two partitions and no
errors on either. Is the USB connection the culprit? Any help is greatly
appreciated!

XP doesn't like to be installed to an external HDD.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

XP doesn't like to be installed to an external HDD.

If the external hard drive is SATA and it has an
eSATA connection, it doesn't care. Check out the
offerings on external eSATA boxes (complete with
power supply and cooling fan):
http://kingwin.com/product_pages/jt35eubk.asp
Prices run between $27 and $30 from online
retailers. Search Nextag.com, PriceGrabber.com,
Froogle.com, etc. using the model no. as the
search term.

Just use an adapter to change your motherboard's
SATA cable to eSATA for the run out to the
external eSATA box:
http://www.firewire-1394.com/external-sata-solutions.htm

Need eSATA cables?
http://www.firewire-1394.com/sata-cables-shielded.htm
http://www.svc.com/esata-cable.html

If your PC doesn't have a SATA controller, get
one on a PCIe card:
http://siig.com/ViewProduct.aspx?pn=SC-SAE412-S2
Or on a PCI card:
http://siig.com/ViewProduct.aspx?pn=SC-SA2012-S1
http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?product_id=168

With an external eSATA, you can boot from it, and
data transfer will be faster than with USB 2.0. And...
you can disconnect it and put it in a safe deposit box.

*TimDaniels*

 

[GMAN]

Few BIOSes enable booting from a USB device.
If you are using a SATA hard drive, why not use an eSATA
connection to the external box? That would allow booting
and faster data access as well. Search groups.google.com
for "eSATA external" with "Timothy Daniels" as the author
in the past 2 weeks for equipment available.

*TimDaniels*

Every motherboard i have bought to build my systems with in the last 5 years
or so have had boot from USB.

Plus, if his system is new enough to have an eSATA port, it most certainly has
a boot by USB option in his bios .

 

[GMAN]

Yup. DVD drives surely are "legacy" devices. Makes
complete sense. And then the BIOS will give the user the
option of doing "Advanced" operations, as opposed to
"Retarded" operations, I suppose. How friendly of the BIOS.
Ptoooey!

*TimDaniels*

What he meant was that for the bios to grab hold of external devices like mice
and keyboards and USB devices prior to the OS booting, it needs the bios
support for USB devices enables so that it can use them without Windows driver
support. So yet they are considered legacy by the bios.