Good post - the key to bootable support is the term "Removable" not
external, both SCSI and SATA-II external drives are seen by XP as
"Fixed" and can be made to boot from.

"Yves Leclerc" <yvesleclercNOSPAM@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:OvFXdOKEGHA.140@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
> On 03/01/2006 "Carey Frisch [MVP]" <cnfrisch@nospamgmail.com> wrote:
>>Windows can only be installed on an internal drive.
>>External drives are designed for file storage only.
>>
>
> Not completely true! You can only install Windows XP successfully onto an
> External SCSI or SATA hard drive since these are still considered/behave
> as
> internal drives. USB and Firewire drives need the enhanced hot-swap
> drivers,
> which seem to cause the problem of not allowing Windows XP to be
> installed/booted from these types of external drivers.
>
>
> It has been previous posted, here in this newsgroup, that people have
> gotten
> XP to boot successfully off an USB drive, but only after coping a "known"
> working internal IDE drive.
>
>
> Also, since Vista is still in development (I have not used it yet.), this
> "restriction" of installing onto USB/Firewire drives may still be there.
>
> --
> ---
>
> Y.
>