Boot Windows From USB HDD.

Hi

Has anyone ever successfully installed and boot-ed a Windows 2K/XP from a USB HDD?

Kindly post if you have a hack that can do this?

Regards
Cheetah

Do you mean a USB memory device such as one of those keyfob things or an actual hard disk that connects to your machine via USB? I know some of the USB memory devices are bootable so you could perhaps cram a cut-down version of BartPE onto one. However I'm not sure you could boot off a hard disk connected via USB - unless somebody out there knows different?

As long as your motherboard supports booting from a USB device, you can generally boot from DOS/98/ME/Linux. W2K/XP cannot without seriously messing around, although BARTPE www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ can. It is however not an installed version of windows. It's rather like a LIVE CD for XP.

Sorry, forgot to leave the hack for booting from BARTPE. This is for WINPE, but it's similar to BARTPE: www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=14316

Hi Friends,

Thanks for the suggestions.

The hard way, I have come to know that, with the current available versions of Windows (may be with an exception of PE), you can never successfully boot Windows from a external USB HDD even with great tools like BootitNG.

I am buying another hard disk bracket for my laptop, to swap between.

/Kind Regards
Cheetah

I just booted up onto 2000 advanced server on one, no problem other then speed. I did however have a heck of a time installing onto the drive. Couldn't get the installer program to see the usb drive.