W2K Installatiion or Boot from External USB Drive???

  • Thread starter Thread starter hector
  • Start date Start date
H

hector

I just purchased a 120gig Western Digitial External USB Hard Drive. I
don't have any experience with them as far as usage and/or reliability.

It was purchased to add to our current NT 4.0 server which currently has an
old 10 gig. I plan to upgrade the NT 4.0 server to Windows 2000 Server this
weekend.

The NT machine has 2 USB ports so I am presuming it is going to be ok,
although the machine is atleast 4 years old. Don't know if its USB 1 port or
not, and I am saying that because the External Drive box says USB 2.0.
Using USB ports in general, is relatively new to me.

The NT machine 5 gig is currently partitioned as

C: small FAT 250 meg drive
D: 5 gig NTFS where NT 4.0 is installed
E: 5 gig NTFS storage drive.

What I want to do is put the new External drive on my WIndows 2000 pro
machine, which I just did and it auto-magically was detected and setup as
drive J: I am doing this from home now.

I would like to install Windows 2000 Server on it, then take it to the
office over the weekend and hopefully be able to do the following:

1) Plug it in the NT machine USB port.

Hopefully, this will be recognized as drive F:

2) Change the BOOT.INI

Hopefully, get it right so I have a dual boot option. Once for the current
NT 4.0 boot and one for the new Windows 2000. This is what I current have
for the BOOT.INI on the NT 4.0 machine.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows NT Server Version 4.00"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows NT Server Version 4.00
[VGA mode]" /basevideo /sos

I guess I would have to add one that says:

multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2000 Server"

and change the default to this as well.

Is this correct?

If this works, I can go from there and get everything else going.

Do you see any issue with this or is something else that I have not
considered and/or something else I might encounter or have to do?

Thanks in advance for any advice you might be able to provide

-- hector
 
Ugh! Ok, so installing/upgrading W2K first needs to be done.

Thanks for the input.


John John said:
Nice plan... except that NT4 doesn't support USB. There might be a slim
hope if the drive manufacturer provided NT4 drivers for it. Check
Calvin's page for NT4 & USB Support: http://nt4ref.zcm.com.au/

John
I just purchased a 120gig Western Digitial External USB Hard Drive. I
don't have any experience with them as far as usage and/or reliability.

It was purchased to add to our current NT 4.0 server which currently has an
old 10 gig. I plan to upgrade the NT 4.0 server to Windows 2000 Server this
weekend.

The NT machine has 2 USB ports so I am presuming it is going to be ok,
although the machine is atleast 4 years old. Don't know if its USB 1 port or
not, and I am saying that because the External Drive box says USB 2.0.
Using USB ports in general, is relatively new to me.

The NT machine 5 gig is currently partitioned as

C: small FAT 250 meg drive
D: 5 gig NTFS where NT 4.0 is installed
E: 5 gig NTFS storage drive.

What I want to do is put the new External drive on my WIndows 2000 pro
machine, which I just did and it auto-magically was detected and setup as
drive J: I am doing this from home now.

I would like to install Windows 2000 Server on it, then take it to the
office over the weekend and hopefully be able to do the following:

1) Plug it in the NT machine USB port.

Hopefully, this will be recognized as drive F:

2) Change the BOOT.INI

Hopefully, get it right so I have a dual boot option. Once for the current
NT 4.0 boot and one for the new Windows 2000. This is what I current have
for the BOOT.INI on the NT 4.0 machine.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows NT Server Version 4.00"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows NT Server Version 4.00
[VGA mode]" /basevideo /sos

I guess I would have to add one that says:

multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2000 Server"

and change the default to this as well.

Is this correct?

If this works, I can go from there and get everything else going.

Do you see any issue with this or is something else that I have not
considered and/or something else I might encounter or have to do?

Thanks in advance for any advice you might be able to provide

-- hector
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
hector said:
Ugh! Ok, so installing/upgrading W2K first needs to be done.
Click to expand...

Yes, and in any case there are still a few "glitches" in your plan.
Booting off on USB drives is a hit and miss proposition at best and it
more often is a miss than a hit. On newer motherboards with BIOS
engineered to make use of it some report success while others still
struggle to get it to work. On an NT4 era computer my guess is that it
would be quite difficult if not almost impossible to accomplish this.

Secondly, personally I wouldn't want to rig up my server to run on a USB
drive. I do admit that it's been at least two years since I looked at
this but with all the hoopla USB drives are still slower than
IDE/SATA/SCSI drives. The numbers look impressive on paper and in
theory but in practice it is less spectacular. Almost all the test
results and data that I have seen 2 years ago shot the fast USB claims
full of holes and showed even old IDE drives to be much faster. I don't
think running an operating system on these devices to be such a good
idea and if you are to do this I would at the very least suggest that
the pagefile be place on one of your internal disks instead of the USB.

Thirdly, you can't just install W2K Server (or any OS) on that USB drive
(or any other drive) on your home machine then expect it to boot while
plugged in to your NT4 machine. The hardware would have to be about 99%
identical for that to work. Operating systems are installed to suit and
use the hardware on which it is installed. When you take the drive to
work it will be on a different motherboard, different chipset, different
everything... Even if you can overcome USB boot problem it still
wouldn't boot the new server installation, all you will get will be one
blue screen after another. You could still however do what you want but
you would have to "prepare" the installation for a "move" operation
before you plug it in the NT4 computer, and keep your fingers crossed!

It's none of my business but all and all and with the limitations and
technological problems presented by your plan I think you would be well
advised to ditch the plan and get a larger internal drive instead and
install W2K server on it. The USB drive is not lost, you could still
use it for backups or for other data storage.
Thanks for the input.
Click to expand...

You're welcome.

John
 
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