Installing XP on external drive?

[TheGreatSatan]

Has anyone installed XP on an external drive before? I'm thing of using an external drive on my Framed project, so when I boot up what ever system I'm using, I could just plug in the external drive. Also, would this not be a good idea because of all the different motherboards and their individual drivers?

[SgtM]

Also, would this not be a good idea because of all the different motherboards and their individual drivers?

BINGO. Can't you put DSL on a thumb drive or something and run it that way?

[Eclecticos]

I found a guide for loading XP on a thumb drive. Here (http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176) <=-

When you boot up the computer with the external drive plugged in, go to your BIOS and see if there is a hard drive detected. If so, then you shouldn't have any problems installing XP to it.

Edit: You have to add "USB drive" to the Boot list.

You can load a boot loader to the USB device
which starts Windows XP from the HDD.

[Eclecticos]

Additional Information:

Make sure that the motherboard which you are working with supports USB booting.
To do this simply enter the BIOS (this can usually be done by press the Delete key while the computer is posting) and go into the menu selection titled something like, "Advanced Features". This process is a bit different for every BIOS so you may have to search a bit.

Once here look for the boot devices, which will be placed in order: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and so on. Normally the computer will attempt to boot from the CD-ROM or a specific hard drive first, but you want to change this to the USB drive.

The proper selection to do this varies depending on your BIOS version but it be USB RMD-FDD, USB ZIP, USD HDD, USB CD-ROM, or something close to these.

Once these is chosen as the 1st boot device you can move your hard drive and/or optical drive down the line (so they will be used if a USB device is not present) or remove everything (so that the computer will only boot from USB). A little trial and error may be needed here to make sure you have chosen the right boot device.

[TheGreatSatan]

I'd hate to have it boot to my USB mouse. :)

[Luke122]

BINGO. Can't you put DSL on a thumb drive or something and run it that way?

I second this one.. run some small OS from a flash drive, or.. you can get a CF to IDE adaptor, and use a CF card as a hard drive. Beware of the limited rewrites though, and make sure you turn off virtual memory.. or it'll die really fast.

Also, if these machines will be networked, you could setup a PXE boot, and have it pull an image from the network.. A bit more complex, but very cool, and doesnt require any sort of drives at all!

[luciusad2004]

Also, if these machines will be networked, you could setup a PXE boot, and have it pull an image from the network.. A bit more complex, but very cool, and doesn't require any sort of drives at all!

that sounds awesome. When you say it pulls an image, do you mean it copies the entire OS to a local drive or does it actually run the OS over the network? I imagine there would be an increased boot time but how does it run after boot? Slower?

[Crazy Buddhist]

that sounds awesome. When you say it pulls an image, do you mean it copies the entire OS to a local drive or does it actually run the OS over the network? I imagine there would be an increased boot time but how does it run after boot? Slower?

It loads the OS into memory over the network. You have to set the network adapter to be the first boot device. It does run slower than with machines booted from disks because the RAM is used to hold the OS. Unless you bump up the RAM to compensate.

There is information on how it works and is set up here (http://www.calvin.edu/%7Eadams/research/microwulf/sys/microwulf_notes.pdf) (in cluster computing using ubuntu but the basics are the same).

CrazyB

[Eclecticos]

I'd hate to have it boot to my USB mouse. :)

There may even be a mouse flash drive made by some company in Beijing you can boot up with. :D

[Eclecticos]

I found it! I'll be damned its made by Microsoft.
http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/6752/mmmm8000thumbmw2.jpg

Link (http://zachmb.com/blog/wireless-mouse-meets-flash-drive/) <=-

[Durrthock]

I'm pretty sure they sell usb thumb drives but you cant run off of them, I think I may have read something about this the other day.
On second thought that was about virtual systems. Running another operating system on a computer, Maybe you could just boot it off a thumb drive.
And im fairly sure you could get linux to boot off of an external drive.

[PartyLikeARockstar]

I'm pretty sure they sell usb thumb drives but you cant run off of them, I think I may have read something about this the other day.
On second thought that was about virtual systems. Running another operating system on a computer, Maybe you could just boot it off a thumb drive.
And im fairly sure you could get linux to boot off of an external drive.

for Windows:
http://www.ngine.de/article/id/8

for Linux:
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

[Crazy Buddhist]

Re: booting all machines from one drive:

If you were running Win 2K it would be less of a problem. I've taken a HDD off one machine and stuck it in a completely different machine (processor family, mobo, everything) for win2K to reconfigure itself and find drivers on boot up and work.

Xp seems too much of a control freak for this to work.

CB