Using External USB hard disk for booting Win2k

[Anshu2000]

Hi,


I have a dell inspiron 1405 laptop. I have Windows media center edition
installed on the same. I wish to buy an external hard disk only if I
can install win2k on that and then boot from the it. Is this possible?
will the installation be straight forward or something special has to
be done?
I wish to use the external disk for win2k server only

thanks
Anshuman

 

[Rod Speed]

I have a dell inspiron 1405 laptop. I have Windows media center
edition installed on the same. I wish to buy an external hard disk only
if I can install win2k on that and then boot from the it. Is this possible?

Not easily with a laptop.

will the installation be straight forward
Nope.

or something special has to be done?

Yes, 2K wont install and boot on a removable external drive on a laptop.

I wish to use the external disk for win2k server only

What you should be able to do is get another internal drive for
that laptop and swap the drive when you want to change OSs.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Hi,

I have a dell inspiron 1405 laptop. I have Windows media center edition
installed on the same. I wish to buy an external hard disk only if I
can install win2k on that and then boot from the it. Is this possible?
will the installation be straight forward or something special has to
be done?
I wish to use the external disk for win2k server only

This could be difficult or impossible. The problem is that while your
BIOS may (or may not) support booting, the OS also has to support
reading the drive very early in the boot-process. With Linux, you
could statically compile the USB-driver into the kernel, which in
turn gets loaded by the original boot loader. Or you could put it
into a ramdisk-image that is attached to the kernel.

However, AFAIK, there is no way to embed the USB driver into the file
the boot loader loads in win2k and so win2k will try to read the
driver from disk and naturally fail.

Arno

 

[Anshu2000]

Thanks for the replies.
Does this same shortcoming exists with windows xp also?
Also i same another topic in this group at

http://groups.google.com/group/comp...k=st&q=boot.ini+entry&rnum=1#4fcd24df6f592a19

this person was successfull in booting from an external had disk.
Pls let me know your comments
Thanks
Anshuman

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

This could be difficult or impossible. The problem is that while your
BIOS may (or may not) support booting, the OS also has to support
reading the drive very early in the boot-process. With Linux, you
could statically compile the USB-driver into the kernel, which in
turn gets loaded by the original boot loader. Or you could put it
into a ramdisk-image that is attached to the kernel.

However,

AFAIK,

Which -as usual- is very little.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Thanks for the replies.
Does this same shortcoming exists with windows xp also?
Also i same another topic in this group at

this person was successfull in booting from an external had disk.
Pls let me know your comments

I am not sure this is actually a success. Sure, booting from USB
with the system drive not on USB should be doable. But that
is not what you want, now is it?

Arno

 

[Anshu2000]

Yeah , I dont want to boot the USB drive along with the system drive...
, I want to boot using the USB and let me internal HDD be secondry to
it....How about image tranfer method of doing this?

 

[Arno Wagner]

Yeah , I dont want to boot the USB drive along with the system drive...
, I want to boot using the USB and let me internal HDD be secondry to
it....How about image tranfer method of doing this?

Well, it will be difficult at the least. I think image transfer
will not help. The critical problem is that as soon as the
boot-loader hands over to the OS, the OS has to be able to access
the USB storage device. AFAIK Windows needs to load drivers to do
that, so it will not work.

Arno

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Well, it will be difficult at the least. I think image transfer
will not help. The critical problem is that as soon as the
boot-loader hands over to the OS, the OS has to be able to access
the USB storage device.

AFAIK

Which as usual is very little.

Windows needs to load drivers to do that, so it will not work.

That is so utterly clueless.
Windows needs a driver to load the driver. Geez, what next, babblemouth.

 

[_dee]

I have a dell inspiron 1405 laptop. I have Windows media center edition
installed on the same. I wish to buy an external hard disk only if I
can install win2k on that and then boot from the it. Is this possible?
will the installation be straight forward or something special has to
be done?
I wish to use the external disk for win2k server only

Someone on Notebookforums.com was just talking about this, and saying
that you could do just that with Acronis utilities. I don't remember
in what context, or even if the poster was 100% correct. Had I known
that you would ask the question, I would have taken note of the exact
thread. However I believe it was in one of the Dell forums.

Acronis is also represented on Wilderssecurity.com. Their reps may be
able to advise you there.

 

[Eric Gisin]

No, he didn't get it booting from USB.
The USB driver is not loaded during NT loading, so it did not see the drive.