Installing XP on external USB drive

[Rich]

I know that this has been asked a million times but I dont want to boot from
it, just install, I just bought a 500gb SATA drive and an external SATA
enclosure for my netbook, all the systems I have are IDE drives, I just want
to load XP on the external drive SATA drive then install it in to mini....the
mini must be able to boot from it...the only catch is that the mini doesnt
have a DVD/CD drive, and I dont have or want to buy an external DVD/CD
drive..I should be able to hook the external drive to my bug HP laptop and
load XP onto the external, unplug it, remove the SATA drive and install it
into the netbook....but it aint working....any ideas????????????? Rich

 

[Guest]

Rich,

This was discussed around 3 months ago here & if you search Google there are
videos about it too but in most cases it doesn't work

 

[Al]

Installing XP (or Vista) from USB works fine (we are talking about
installing XP and not booting into XP).

The USB stick must be clean (diskpart.exe good utility)- formatted FAT32 -
partitioned - designated active (drive letter may be assigned but not
necessary). The USB drive is now - bootable - copy XP installation CD to
the drive. Boot from the USB device and install XP, which installs lot
faster than using the XP CD.
Procedure is provided via TechNet or Springboard sites.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Installing XP (or Vista) from USB works fine

Maybe, maybe not. It depends entirely on what motherboard/BIOS you
have and whether it supports that.

 

[BillW50]

In Ken Blake, MVP typed on Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:42:57 -0700:

Maybe, maybe not. It depends entirely on what motherboard/BIOS you
have and whether it supports that.

Also the Windows XP install must be XP SP2 or SP3. Anything older will
*not* install from USB. If all you have is older, you need to slipstream
it before installing.