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Can I boot to external hard drive?
Name: doghead Date: September 29, 2006 at 19:23:28 Pacific OS: XP Media CPU/Ram: Athlon Product: Compaq
Comment:
I'm running XP. I have an external HD in a USB box, with programs and data which I need to access. It is running Win ME. It seems to my limited digital knowledge that I have to get the computer to boot to the external drive, yes? Eventually I may get all the programs transferred or replaced on the XP machine, but for now, I have to run the Win ME drive a little. So, do I have to boot it to the external drive, and how do I do it?
Name: Sabertooth Date: September 29, 2006 at 19:26:18 Pacific
Reply:
I doubt your crippled Compaq BIOS supports that (USB boot) feature.
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Response Number 2
Name: Miller88 Date: September 29, 2006 at 19:27:42 Pacific
Reply:
You should be able if you can usb boot. I'd try sticking in a flash drive before doing anything - if you get the non system disc boot error and it is cuased by the usb flash drive, then you can usb boot.
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Response Number 3
Name: ham30 Date: September 29, 2006 at 19:43:01 Pacific
Reply:
The drive was probably set up with ME as the C: drive. The operating system (ME) will only work when the drive is attached internally as the C: drive. Therefore it will never work as an external USB drive. That is unless you can manage to reinstall ME on it when it's connected externally. I'm not sure that's possible.
Do yourself a favor BACKUP!
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Response Number 4
Name: doghead Date: September 29, 2006 at 19:58:23 Pacific
Reply:
ham, if that's the case, I'm cooked, eh?
BTW, I looked at the boot menu, and the sequence is: *Floppy Group [not installed] *CD ROM Group *HDD Group *Network Group [not installed]
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Response Number 5
Name: ham30 Date: September 29, 2006 at 20:30:54 Pacific
Reply:
It looks like your cooked on at least two counts. First, the facts I pointed out in response #3 and second, the fact that you cannot boot from a USB drive.
Do yourself a favor BACKUP!
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Response Number 6
Name: dosser Date: September 29, 2006 at 23:01:57 Pacific
Name: blackbill Date: September 30, 2006 at 06:22:47 Pacific
Reply:
You can boot to ANY drive, including flash drives with BOOTitNG from terabyte unlimited.
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Response Number 8
Name: Zibiso Date: October 4, 2006 at 05:45:47 Pacific
Reply:
Try pressing F8 when the system boots up... usuall you'll get a message like( press DEL to enter setup.)In this case you don't have to go that far just press F8 then you'll get options of where you can boot from.But make sure that the Ext. Hard Drive is also connected.
Computers are programmed....And will do what you tell it to do.
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