Booting off 2nd HD on Dell Studio 1745 Laptop

Thank You Timothy and Brian K for answering my post. Reading your
answers have given me an idea on how I will try to go about this. The
cnet.com reviews on Bootit NG are positive. If I understand Brian
correctly the "BING" bootloader can be run from a CD. It appears it
can be tried out without having to first install to the MBR like
with the OSL2000 boot manager. Maybe can even run without having to
take up another primary.Wonder if there is a way to run BING from USB
flash.
Oh Timothy I looked into PC Express eSATA cards at Q;A sites but
opinions vary from ..."eSATA is the only ext drive capable of booting
Windows" to more pessimistic views like Western Digital Tech support
which are doubtful Windows is even capable of booting from any
external HD. It's just Windows thing they figure.
-------------
Brian K on 16 Jul 2010 07:06 wrote:
......Try this. Boot from a BING
CD. If you can see your eSATA HD in Partition Work then BING will be
able to
boot an OS on that HD.....

press810,

There are good tutorials on using BING here....

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/howto/index.htm

BING can run from a floppy, CD or USB flash drive. You can partition, create
and restore images, and do various manipulations on the MBR from the boot
disk. But for the Boot Manager function it must be installed to the HD. You
only need 8 MB of unallocated space. It doesn't matter if you have 50 GB of
unallocated space. BING will only use 8 MB to create a primary partition for
itself. If you no longer want BING installed, it is a one click uninstall.

From the BING website....

"Boot any partition on any hard drive (via BIOS)"

"press810" wrote in message
...
to more pessimistic views like Western Digital Tech support
which are doubtful Windows is even capable of booting from any
external HD. It's just Windows thing they figure.


I can assure you WinXP can boot from an eSATA HD and a USB external HD.
WinXP can boot from a USB flash drive but it runs very slowly.

Although I haven't tried OS other than WinXP on an eSATA HD, I'll bet BING
could boot any OS on that HD.

I just booted Win7 64 bit from my eSATA external HD.

In d.com,
Brian K typed on Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:48:18 +1000:
"press810" wrote in message
...
to more pessimistic views like Western Digital Tech support
which are doubtful Windows is even capable of booting from any
external HD. It's just Windows thing they figure.

I can assure you WinXP can boot from an eSATA HD and a USB external
HD. WinXP can boot from a USB flash drive but it runs very slowly.

Although I haven't tried OS other than WinXP on an eSATA HD, I'll bet
BING could boot any OS on that HD.

To make Windows XP to boot off of an USB drive (and most flash since
they are interfaced through USB), one needs to make about three pages of
registry hacks. This is all needed because Windows resets the USB ports
halfway through the boot and then it will hang.

I don't know if BING gets around this or not. But stock, Windows XP (and
I doubt Vista or 7 will either) without a lot of modification. I don't
know if native Windows resets the eSATA ports too during boot or not.

--
Bill
Gateway MX6124 ('06 era) 1 of 3 - Windows XP SP2

"BillW50" wrote in message
...
In d.com,

To make Windows XP to boot off of an USB drive (and most flash since they
are interfaced through USB), one needs to make about three pages of
registry hacks. This is all needed because Windows resets the USB ports
halfway through the boot and then it will hang.



Bill,

Until a few weeks ago I would have been in complete agreement. TeraByte
Unlimited has published a script that does these edits automatically, in a
few seconds. I've use it to boot a WinXP OS from my USB external HD.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/tbosdt.htm

See Additional items. USBBoot TBS script to enable booting XP from a USB
drive.

In ond.com,
Brian K typed on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 07:01:44 +1000:
"BillW50" wrote in message
...
In d.com,

To make Windows XP to boot off of an USB drive (and most flash since
they are interfaced through USB), one needs to make about three
pages of registry hacks. This is all needed because Windows resets
the USB ports halfway through the boot and then it will hang.



Bill,

Until a few weeks ago I would have been in complete agreement.
TeraByte Unlimited has published a script that does these edits
automatically, in a few seconds. I've use it to boot a WinXP OS from
my USB external HD.
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/tbosdt.htm

See Additional items. USBBoot TBS script to enable booting XP from a
USB drive.

Brian, Microsoft says it *cannot* be done. But we know better don't we?
It can be done, but the registry has to be hacked to stop Windows from
resetting the USB ports in the middle of booting. You can hack it
yourself or run a script that somebody made. So nothing I said is untrue
at all.

--
Bill
Gateway MX6124 ('06 era) 1 of 3 - Windows XP SP2

"BillW50" wrote in message
...
yourself or run a script that somebody made. So nothing I said is untrue
at all.



When you put it that way, I agree.