boot with exteranl hardrive

[mshabsovich]

i just bought a western digital 80gb usb 2.0 external hardrive model # WD800B008-RNN, and first of all i want to install windows xp on it, but i cant, how can i do this. i have the xp disk. And my second problem is how can i boot from it as my main boot device. i did go in to my bios and set the main boot device to a usb device but it did not work. please help, thank you.

[Gazornenplat]

I checked the Western Digital website and they said:

"Western Digital does not provide technical support for booting your computer using an external hard drive. BIOS manufacturers who design PC system BIOS chips have informed Western Digital that it is not currently possible to boot your computer with an external hard drive. If you intend to make a copy of your boot drive, please use a second internal drive (EIDE or Serial ATA), rather than an external drive."

However, I did find that USB hard drives by Addonics (never heard of them) have been tested with Phoenix and Award BIOS and will boot. There might be other brands as well.

Hope I helped.

[mshabsovich]

i did see this on their website, it says they dont provide service but it is possible, i just dont know how

[steveb]

google for 'boot usb'
- there is a whole sub-culture of the LINUX crowd trying to boot from USB [although they mainly focus on 'flash' (pen) drives]. Most success so far seems to be using some Japanese drivers .. good luck ! (please post if you manage it - others will be interested)

[mshabsovich]

Japanese drivers for what? im not exactly shure what ur talking about. where can i get them?HD's dont have drivers. when i first pluged my HD, windows just made it that it could read the HD, but the HD dosent have any drivers. please reply, Thsnk You