Booting from USB drive?

lPeregrine · Post by **lPeregrine** » 2006-01-03 01:43am

Is there any way to do this? I have a laptop with a broken hard drive connection, but the rest of it seems to work just fine. So I'd like to run it off my external hard drive and salvage at least some use of it. Windows XP won't work, and I've tried searching a lot online but haven't been able to find anything useful. Anyone here happen to know a way to do it?

Glocksman · Post by **Glocksman** » 2006-01-03 01:56am

I haven't tried it myself and I don't know if it'll work, but my laptop lists 'USB device' among the boot drive options in the BIOS.
You might visit your laptop manufacturer's tech support site and see if they have any instructions on how to configure (if it's even possible on your laptop) it to boot from an external USB drive.

darthdavid · Post by **darthdavid** » 2006-01-03 01:56am

Depends on the BIOS. I know that my computer has the option to boot off USB in it's bios. If you don't know how to get into the bios, just boot up and hit whatever key it says to on one of the boot screens when it says "hit (whatever key it is) for options" or something to that effect. And never do anything in the BIOS if you're not sure you know what you're doing. Fucking up the computer on the BIOS level = BAD!

lPeregrine · Post by **lPeregrine** » 2006-01-03 02:05am

I've tried every combination of BIOS settings it offers. The only thing I haven't done is go looking for BIOS updates, because I don't want to permanently screw things up if I don't have to. Windows XP installed fine through the first part... detected the USB drive, formatted/copied files. But when it's supposed to reboot and finish setup, it failed with an "operating system not found" problem.

From what I've seen, it's a problem with windows refusing to run off a USB drive in general. What I'm hoping for is a mac/linux solution to it, since maybe those don't have the same problem.

Glocksman · Post by **Glocksman** » 2006-01-03 02:08am

Try looking at the manufacturer's site for a USB driver that you'd install off of a floppy when the XP install asks you to hit F6 if you need to install a device driver.

darthdavid · Post by **darthdavid** » 2006-01-03 02:08am

Well there are plenty of linux distributions that will run off a small flash drive or even a floppy. Maybe you don't have enough space for windows on there? Also, if your computer is X86 then there's no legal way to get a 'Mac' solution for it unless you're an Intel developer.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2006-01-03 02:52am

Maybe a version of Win9X?
EDIT: Disregard 9X

And if your CDROM drive works, just use Knoppix or some other Linux livecd.