Booting from a an external USB hard drive

[craigwojo9]

Is it possible to boot from a external USB hard drive? If so, how?
I know it would have to be listed in the BIOS for it to boot, but is there a BIOS (what motherboard, chipset)that allows this?

Thank you,
Craig

 

[linney]

See what's available here.

http://www.weethet.nl/english/hardware_bootfromusbstick.php

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=28700158

http://www.google.com/search?source...4-50,GGLD:en&q="usb+boot"+motherboard+bios+xp

http://groups-beta.google.com/group...4-50,GGLD:en&q="usb+boot"+motherboard+bios+xp

 

[Rick998]

craigwojo9,

Yes... we boot from USB HD's, FD's and pen drives regularly at work.

All that's needed is that the USB device itself is bootable and that the BIOS supports booting from a USB device (most over the last 2-3 years are and many have a function key combination to bring up a boot order menu on power up).

Have a look at Linney's links. I would also recommend HP's freeware 'USB DiskOnKey' formatter utility. See

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/EvoDesktop/us/download/20306.html

for Windows version or

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/EvoDesktop/us/download/20234.html

for the DOS version. This can be used with some other makes of USB drives to make them bootable and is much easier than FDISKing and formatting them manually as bootable. (We use Buffalo 512Mb pendrives, Disgo 64Mb and 128Mb pendrives plus Bookdrive 20Gb.)

We may have been just lucky with the USB devices we use. Have a look at

http://www.911cd.net/forums/index.p...167ef5bc&act=Print&client=printer&f=20&t=7632

which describes somes problems encountered.

Hope this helps...

 

[orman]

On the side, one problem I encounter was I could not boot from a USB hard drive while a laptop was docked. Once I undocked it, I could boot from it fine.