Hi, I purchased WD USB portable slim Hard drive 120 GB 5400RPM. I tried to connect to IBM laptop through USB and tried to install windows XP on that. Halfway it stops and shows that it can't install Windows XP and there may be some problems releted to start up. I tried all options but failed. I want to execute operating system from USB portable hard drive without affecting inbuilt hard drive of the computer. Please suggest in an explanatory words what needs to be done in order to install operating system. Therefore having option for two operating systems to use while the drive is connected. Thanks Roger Roger Perth Australia

In theory it does not work trying to boot a Windows system off a USB 2.0 HDD according to Microsoft provided the bios has support for it but read this first so that you can modify the way your Windows XP CD works to get the job done(you will need some time for experimentation in order to get this done): http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pagei...

You may visit http://www.disklessangel.com to obtain relative information about booting Win XP from various portable devices. May be it can help to solve your problem.