View Full Version : bootable external harddrive

pphcraeser
21st June 2002, 14:58
Does anyone know if you can put an OS on an external harddrive and boot to it?
Mi_Mono
21st June 2002, 20:49
I don't believe you can boot off anything other than the IDE bus (floppies, cds, and internal hdd's)


Otherwise how would motherboard know to interact with Firewire or USB2, those things need drivers provided by an os...
gooki
22nd June 2002, 01:43
Just check your motherboard as I'm prety sure some support booting from usb??? However don't quote me on that.
TRILIGHT
22nd June 2002, 04:41
You can easily boot off of external drives on a SCSI bus. Just get a SCSI controller with a BIOS and you're set. You can boot to any device on the chain.
pphcraeser
23rd June 2002, 19:28
Thanks for all the responses,I beleive Mi_Mono is right, you need an OS to talk to the firewire/usb2 port, for the computer to know its there in the first place.

cheers.
fisix
25th June 2002, 10:38
actually, some bios recognize usb/ieee/zip drives on boot. you can set your system to boot off these, but you need a bios that has the options available in the 'boot from' menu. firewire boot might be a nifty thing for a laptop, though most other options are very very slow.

-fisix