Hardware

Ask something
Question Locked

XP pro on portable hard drive

0 helpful
5 replies

by mrs.spock

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

Can one load XP pro on usb hard drive...would setup recognize the partition as a hard drive....I am not talking about flash drive...just a portable usb hard drive?? Has anyone done this successfully??

Thaks for your input.

Jeri

5 replies

by oh smeg

But as this is Windows you need hardware that will boot off a USB Device and it will only work on the Hardware that it was installed upon as the drivers required for different hardware will not be present.

If you want to use this as a portable drive between different computers again it's possible but not highly recommended as the time wasted doing constant Repair Installs will be great. You may as well just do a Repair Install of XP onto the existing HDD in the computer.

How to replace the M'Board you will need to follow these directions to use on different hardware every time that you use it. Well on different hardware at least if you have several computers of the same type/model it can be useful them but not on different models.

http://tinyurl.com/j9u7

How to do a repair install of XP

http://tinyurl.com/g4bv8

Also something you need to keep in mind External HDD are not a great thing to use full time as they get hot very hot and are very prone to vibration damage. So if you use a HDD like this it is going to fail sooner rather than latter. But if you absolutely must do this you need to employ some active cooling for the HDD enclosure and the HDD inside it. Start off with a metal Enclosure for better cooling not a plastic one and then using some type of Fan have air constantly flowing over it. Ideally blowing on it or a Heatsink connected tot he enclosure is the best but this may not be suitable to be portable any longer and you need to make it Electrically Safe.

Col

by mrs.spock

Thank for responding....I would not be using this on a regular basis...only when I need to run certain software and only when I travel because my notebook runs Linux and I don't want to change that.
Thanks again for your input...I am going to try it...I hate carrying two notebooks.

Jeri

by oh smeg

From the way that a lot of people ask this I was thinking that you wanted to use the drive on different computers. If that was the case there would be a problem.

Col

by ishould

This won't help the OP but for anyone it may help:
I found a tool that will allow you to boot XP installations on many many motherboards, effectively to allow swapping of hard drives and booting windows. Its essentially loading all the IDE (works on SATA as well) drivers into windows instead of just the ones needed. Its also much faster than repair installations on every motherboard haha.
Instructions: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314082

I have the reg and sys files on my flash drive with full instructions but I left it at work! (arg!) If I remember I'll post a link for download, hope this helps someone!

This discussion is closed to new replies.