Booting from USB External Hard Drive

Rockster2U--

Yes, it is Greek.

Re 1) I do want my USB External Hard Drive to be bootable. How do you suggest I clone my existing hard drive to the USB External Hard Drive? I guess I thought I had already done that by creating the backup, including OS. I assume you have seen my thoughts about the directory setup on the backup possibly being the problem.

Re 2) I would like to install WinXP Pro on the USB External Hard Drive, which as mentioned, should have a WinXP operating system already on it (WinXP Home in this case).

Can I disconnect the existing internal hard drive without opening the case? Can you give me any insight why disconnecting the internal hard drive is going to permit installation of WinXP Pro on the external drive when the external hard drive was recognized and offered as a possible download destination when I tried to install WinXP Pro two days ago, but then when I chose it and tried to go forward with the installation got only the message " "Your computer setup program cannot gain access to the disk containing the partition or free space you chose. Setup cannot install Windows XP on this hard disk "? What drivers is F6 loading?

Do I reconnect the internal hard drive afterwards assuming I am successful in both booting from and installing WinXP Pro on the USB External Hard Drive?

 

Hi George,

You have me mixed up with Jim and I agree that its an image on the USB drive, not a clone.

Jim,
How do you suggest I clone my existing hard drive to the USB External Hard Drive?
That's a seperate piece of software.

Hope Rockster answers the disconnecting the internal drive question - I don't get that either.

Regards - Charles

 

Jim

First off, I know nothing about Dansk Retrospect so can offer no opinion or suggestions there. Yes the directory tree does seem like its got too many branches to weather the storm but again, pure conjecture from this end re: what it does or what its doing and why it would write that way - could be for the incrementals in second go-around but just plain don't know.

As to cloning - my suggestion is to use ghost from circa 2003. Simple menu, easy to follow just select disk to disk and have a copy of your USB drivers available for that drive - you should have a chance to load them and should be prompted. I say should because I've never had one of your drives - works just fine for my little external laptop drives in a USB case.

#2 - As to why disconnect the internal - so nothing gets loaded on it when you do an installation to the USB. And, forget about whatever's already on that USB if you want to do an installation (unless you have it partitioned). You want to start with a clean partition for your OS. Very early in the setup, you will be prompted to hit F6 if you have any drivers necessary for drive recognition - hit the key and continue. Shortly therafter, you'll be prompted for the drivers - have them extracted, ready and waiting on a floppy. Don't worry if they don't pass muster with Microsoft - they are the drive mfg's drivers. Then just follow the prompts.

Disconnect existing drive without opening the case? Only if you have some mystical powers or a big hole in your case that you can fit your hand through.

Headed out to dinner with my bride but will check back later - hope you have it all done and are smiling like a Cub Scout in a room full of Brownies.



quick edit - OK its not Dansk - its dantz. Had candle light dining on my mind.

 

#2 - As to why disconnect the internal Ok I got it, thanks Rockster.

Jim might not want to open the case because of the warrenty agreement with Dell, opennning the case would void that.

Regards - Charles

 

Just did a little reading on the Dantz site.

Retrospect delivers fast, efficient bare metal restore capabilities for your entire computer environment. During the course of performing backups, Retrospect proactively gathers all necessary information to completely restore a server, desktop, or notebook, even if it has become unresponsive. Using the Restore Wizard, simply create a disaster recovery CD from existing backup data, boot the computer, and restore the operating system, application settings, and user preferences. Retrospect saves you countless hours of software installation, system configuration, and downtime costs.

Jim, you may want to try to create that "Disaster Recovery CD " and leave well enough alone. I believe the directory tree and naming convention is also how they manage incremental backups and I am not even remotely qualified to challenge their approach or wisdom. Keep us posted - looks like this Dantz has been around a long time with a good product. And, I just got another piece of knowledge thanks to this board.

 

To All, thanks for the help, but I give up.

I re-formatted the USB External Hard Drive (F:\) to erase the Dantz Retrospect Backup. I then installed Ghost 2003, as Rockster2U recommended, and transferred a Clone of my normal C:\ drive on the USB External Drive. It seems it went successfully. And all these files are now in the F:\ directory , not F:\SoandSo Backup. I also can access the individual files on the F:\ drive without problem.

But the bottom line is that I still cannot boot from the F:\ drive. although it still seems to be recognized by Setup's Hard Drive Sequence. (That still shows a USB Device under the "Systems BIOS Boot Devices ".)

When I tried to install an independent version of XP Pro on F:\ , I now saw the F6 option about installing drivers (much too long to reproduce--dealt with SCSI and RAID and so on). Wow, you have to act fast! That screen is set to self-destruct after a very few seconds. Anyway, I clicked F6 in time, and got a message "Please insert the disk labelled "manufacturer supplied hardware" support disk into drive A" Press Enter when ready.

Since Drive A is my floppy, I sat in amazement. I received no floppy from the USB External Hard Drive manufacturer. All I got from Western Digital was an installation CD with the drivers, Dantz Retrospect, etc. on it. And of course, the Windows XP Pro installation CD was in the CD-ROM drive, so I did not think I should replace it. (I had, in fact. put the USB External Hard Drive's drivers on a floppy, but inserting that did nothing.)

So I just proceeded, and while I cannot remember all the messages, I could not install WinXP Pro on the USB External Hard Drive.

So I decided to forget the External Drive and went ahead and installed XP Pro on my C:\ drive. With the exception of some font changes, that seemed to go OK. So far, I do not see any missing data. I deleted the gratuitous installation of Messenger, and I have gone to Windows Update for the 11 Updates which had come out since the XP Pro CD was made. (The WinXP Pro CD had SP2 on it already.)
I am left with WinXP Pro installed on my C:\ drive and a Ghost2003 Clone of the old C:\ drive which had XP Home on the USB External Hard Drive. I still must read up on Ghost 2003. It is not clear whether it offers differential and/or incremental backups. Dantz Retrospect does.
And the USB External Hard Drive remains only an expensive backup/cloning medium.

 

Rockster2U--

Not sure I understand that part about leaving well enough alone. I certainly did not wind up with a functioning second hard drive as I had hoped.
But, perhaps it is not too pertinent based on the above, now that I have uninstalled the Dantz Retrospect Backup. Still can't say I understand what Dantz means by Snapshot and Backup Set, as opposed to just a Backup.

 

It sounds like you have covered a lot of ground in very short order.

Again, I'm not familiar with Dantz but ......... If you imaged your old XP Home and all apps etc to the USB using Ghost 2003 Drive to Image, you should have spanned image files that you can burn to CD's or DVD's whatever the case may be. If you selected the option to include boot files at the startup of Ghost, the first file in your image sequence will also be bootable. (I know - big IF) You can copy these image files (.gho & .ghs) back over to a folder on your internal HDD for safe keeping. Then you can format your USB external HDD using XP's Disk Management and you sure as heck do have a functioning second drive. If your intent was to make the USB Bootable using Ghost, you would could have selected the Drive to Drive option and would have needed to include USB drivers (Ghost would prompt you for this).

As to the drivers at the F6 Prompt, again - these had to be extracted to a floppy before hand as mentioned yesterday. A short time after the F6 selection, these would be called for during the file copy process of the installation.

My "leave well enough alone" comment was a result of reading a bit on the Dantz website which looked pretty good in terms of what you might have already had re: a restorable backup and a process for scheduled incremental backups.

I'll give you a couple more hours and will be looking forward to your comments with step by step procedures on how all this works as I know you're not going to rest until you have it mastered.

 

Rockster2U--Thanks for your further interest.

That was my intent. And I as remember Ghost's transfer was Drive to Drive (C:\ to F:\ ).
I do not remember being prompted by Ghost for any drivers. As asked earlier, I am not sure what drivers you refer to.
I feel that the only thing I might not have done was to have Ghost include boot drives. I do not remember being asked, but I may have missed it. I did make a Ghost Boot Disk before using Ghost, but was not asked to use it.

I was asked to insert the "manufacturer's floppy" when I tried to install WinXP Pro on F:\. As mentioned, I had, in fact, made a copy of the USB External Hard Drive's drivers on a floppy, but inserting that did not accomplish anything. (Interestingly, I wound up with one less driver for the USB drive when I finished installing WinXP Pro on C:\ .)
I will have a go at Ghosting of the C:\ drive (now with WinXP Pro) to F:\ , being careful to look for prompts for boot drives. But I have spent enough time on this project this past week, so will do it when the spirit moves me again.
P.S.

I had formatted the USB External Disk Drive (to NTFS--it ships formatted to FAT) before both the Dantz and Ghost transfers. But I did not partition it.

 

PeteC--Many thanks for the links.

Well, the White Paper is just that. It basically says that the industry should get together to permit booting from USB External devices.
It also says "Current versions of Windows should not be installed to USB hard disk drives because Windows does not support USB hard disk drives as the primary boot device. "

And the White Paper is also the "accepted answer" to the post on Experts Exchange. In other words, no answer. That Post was scary. Exactly what I have been through, except that I seem to have gotten one step closer with the new BIOS.

The Google page has several other interesting references. I will have to read them more carefully when I have more time. A few seem to imply that DOS Boot Disks might be the answer. Or maybe it is just a few files from a DOS Boot Disk. I have heard that io.sys, msdos.sys, and command.com may be all that is needed. Boot Disks is an area in which I have no experience other than have a stack of them, "in case ". And I see that those three files are already on my PC and therefore should have been transferred to the External Hard Drive.
I need someone to take my hand and guide me through the Boot Disk procedure.

 

Jim;

Correction here - you wouldn't be prompted in Drive to Drive or cloning. You would be prompted in Drive to Disk, both for additional drivers and for boot files.

Pain in the wazoo huh? Re: the three files you reference - I think you're right on but SurferDude is the one who will know for sure.

 

PeteC--Think I will try Virtual PC. Thanks.
Had you not been able to install WinXP to the Maxtor before you used Virtual PC? I presume Virtual PC gives you a choice of drive to which to install.

 

Thanks for the idea Pete, a rather neat solution to this.

I have an external drive and soon will have another, and thinking about having a copy of my old WinME OS running again. Can these virtual OSes be updated and software installed on them?

Regards - Charles

 

Booting from USB External Hard Drive Reply to Thread

I have been following this since it started. I can't give but I sure got a lot.

Pete said he has a 1Touch11 Maxtor. I just bought one and thought I had a Firewire available-thought wrong. Question?>Should I but a USB Hub or a card with the ports on it? I have plenty of resources and several slots open, but all my USB ports are taken.

I bought it primarily for storage/backup. Thanks for any thoughts, Joe R.

ps-What does m/s mean?

 

Pete: Thanks for the info. On reply #38, you showed a screen grab
of device manager. How do you do that??

Joe R.