I just installed a 40g USB 2.0 external hard drive on my system for backup
purposes mainly. Is it possible to boot directly from this drive? Thanks

Donald Parvis wrote:

> I just installed a 40g USB 2.0 external hard drive on my system for
> backup purposes mainly. Is it possible to boot directly from this
> drive? Thanks

It would depend on the operating system you want to install on the
external hard drive and whether your motherboard permits booting from a
usb device. While there have been claims that you can run Windows XP
from an external hard drive, the method has never been outlined where
it could have peer review and testing.

So AFAIK, you would not be able to boot Windows XP from an external hard
drive. As has been mentioned *many* times in this and other MS
newsgroups (do a Google Groups search for something like "boot XP from
external drive"), one of the difficulties is that XP is very tied to
whatever hardware on which you install it. So unless the second
computer had exactly the same hardware in it as the one on which you
installed XP (if you could even do it), there is a very good chance
that XP would not boot or would blue-screen.

Malke
--
MS-MVP Windows User/Shell
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic"