boot for USB drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter John Johnson
  • Start date Start date
J

John Johnson

I have a new Dell computer, Windows XP
2 500 gig drives made to look like a terabyte drive

I have a external USB SATA drive.

I Ghosted My C; drive to this drive.

I wonder if there is a way to boot from this drive, I tried a number
of the logical things and could not do it.

Even called Dell and they suggested if I Install Windows to the drive
and would be the 0 give and it should boot then.

But I want to use by old C: drive with all the programs installed
etc. Mainly in case of a problem with the internatl drives.
 
John said:
I have a new Dell computer, Windows XP
2 500 gig drives made to look like a terabyte drive

I have a external USB SATA drive.

I Ghosted My C; drive to this drive.

I wonder if there is a way to boot from this drive, I tried a number
of the logical things and could not do it.

Even called Dell and they suggested if I Install Windows to the drive
and would be the 0 give and it should boot then.

But I want to use by old C: drive with all the programs installed
etc. Mainly in case of a problem with the internatl drives.
Click to expand...

I don't know if this will work for you as it depends on what/how your
motherboards BIOS works.

On some computers I have been able to boot from the USB drives after going
into BIOS and placing the Boot from USB or if the USB drive is listed I put
it first on the boot list.

Then make sure that the origional boot drive off of the boot list entirely,
so if you have drives C: D: E: and C: is your normal boot drive you don't
want it to appear anywhere in the BIOS boot list. If you are trying to boot
from a USB drive which is at E: thenn it needs to be first on the list or
USB what ever you have.

One other thing you may need to do is to go into the BIOS and tell it can
not "boot from other devices" or what ever it is called on your computer.
This will force the computer to try and use just the drives in the list or
fail to boot at all. With this said, some BIOS work kind of strange, if you
leave the "boot from other devices" on it may find the USB drive as well
even if you don't find a way to add the USB drive on the boot list. The
main thing is to not have your regular "boot" drive listed as bootable in
the list at all.
 
Back
Top