Newbie help needed-external hard drive

[Paul]

If I wanted to add an external hard drive and install a 2nd os on it, what
do I have to do? It would be a usb drive and I would be putting another XP
Pro on it to beta test software and to pre-test purchased software before I
use it on my systems.
Thanks

 

[Frank]

Maybe someone can correct me if I am wrong. I don't believe you can boot
from an external hard drive because windows xp has to be loading in order to
recognize the usb connection and drive. Therefore if you try to boot from
the second drive it will just stop dead in its tracks because no 2nd hard
drive can be found.

 

[Paul]

I thought that also but I thought programs such as boot commander (& others)
would allow this.

 

[Guest]

If your BIOS supports Legacy Adapter you can boot from it.
So it depends on your system

 

[R. McCarty]

Newer motherboards do support booting from USB devices.
My MSI 6380 allows me to boot from my external USB
Maxtor. But I believe you still have to enable Legacy USB
support in BIOS for that capability. Even though the Maxtor
is on a USB-2 Channel the throughput is only about 20 Meg
max and a poor 21.0 mS access time. So if you get it to boot
don't expect comparable performance to an IDE/SCSI drive.

 

[Paul]

Thanks for the info.

If your BIOS supports Legacy Adapter you can boot from it.
So it depends on your system

 

[MildBill]

Not necessarily true, it depends on the system and it's BIOS. I have a
Compaq Presario 2100 notebook, and it is the BIOS that recognizes the USB
devices, such as my only floppy drive, which becomes Drive 'A' when lugged
in, and can be booted from. I also have a Bonzai flash drive, and the
system will happily boot from it if I tell it to, assuming it has been
formatted as a boot device.

Hope this helps, and, as always, your mileage may vary,

MildBill

 

[Alex Nichol]

Maybe someone can correct me if I am wrong. I don't believe you can boot
from an external hard drive because windows xp has to be loading in order to
recognize the usb connection and drive. Therefore if you try to boot from
the second drive it will just stop dead in its tracks because no 2nd hard
drive can be found.

You might be able to using an external boot manager on the fixed HD. It
*may* be possible with BootIT NG, from http://www.BootitNG.com ($35
shareware - 30 day full functional trial) - That has some support for
USB 2 disks. But I think you would probably find that XP refused to run
from a removable device