Usb Hard Drive

I have a new computer 2.6 MhZ with 2.0 USB ports. I have
been told you can buy hard drive cases ready to receive
a hard drive that you can hook up to your computer via the
2.0 USB ports and run another hard drive on your computer.
Can you also have a different operating system and run
under that system. The computer has Win XP. Can Win 98
be run in the hard drive case through the 2.0 USB and what
then happens to win XP. How does this all work?

Thanks, Jerry

 

You can get the USB 2.0 hard drive to boot the computer if the BIOS will support it. You have the change the boot sequence. The computer will boot the first in the sequence.

Assuming that your computer supports booting from the USB drive, the Windows XP drive, which is probably an NTFS partition, will be recognized as a drive with unallocated space. Basically, it just gets ignored.

If you boot Windows XP and stick the Windows 98 drive in. Windows XP will recongize the 98 drive in its entirety. It'll treat everthing like data, unless you have some self executing .exe file on the drive.