Booting from external hard drives

Hello all,

I have a quick question that I'm hoping someone here can address. My boss has asked me about using an external hard drive as a system drive that he can take back and forth to use at two different locations. Now, I have confirmed that the BIOS of both machines can support booting from a USB drive, but I just thought of another concern. Since the two machines are completely different, will XP refuse to boot for anti-piracy reasons like it does some times when moving an internal hard drive with XP installed from one machine to another?

Thanks

 

Swtich USB Boot Media two XP computers

It depends on the OS and the two machines.
If it is XP Pro it might be easier but the hardware on the machines especially the motherboard must be the same.
If you have very diffirent computers lots of luck.
The computer will stop on bootup pretty quickly.
XP is much less forgiving on switching computers with an OS than 98.
A question : I assume that this is a large usb flash memory stick.
Has anyone ever done or seen info on booting from a mechanical external usb powered drive.

 

Yeah, that's what I figured. The install would be XP pro on an external ATA enclosure and the machine hardware would be very different. Thanks for the input.

 

He wants to have his work available on both machines? Look in Help and Support for synchronize and briefcase.

If he has synchronized files it will be a backup system. If he only has his data on one drive...and it fails...

Matt