Booting off 2nd HD on Dell Studio 1745 Laptop

NOTE:it's ok to just answer by making some space right after the
questions on this same post)

How do I "boot off" a 2nd SATA HD on a Dell Studio1745 laptop?

HD will contain Win 7 Home Premium 64bit

Would like to know if I will be able to change the BIOS boot order so
that the second SATA HD becomes the first and vice versa, so that I
can choose which one to boot off?

If not what about a boot manager. Came across one compatible with Win
7 with good reviews at Cnet Downloads. It installs in on the MBR
reportedly without affecting it and provides an uninstall. It's called
OSL2000 boot manager ver 9.23.Does anyone know if this boot manager
could affect the booting of the hidden diagnostic and recovery
partitions.?

If not what about connecting to eSATA/USB combo port by way of an
external HD enclosure. Not sure where or if it will appear on the bios
boot order list which has the following options with nothing connected
yet: 1) HD( ST9500420AS) 2)USB Storage 3) CD/DVD RW 4)Removable
Devices 5) Network. ?

Finally what about looking into An Express Card(EC) (34mm) with eSATA
port and it's own onboard BIOS. ?

Thanks To All

You can boot multiple Operating Systems on the first, second and eSATA HDs
with BootIt NG. Just choose from the boot menu or let it boot to the
default. The Operating Systems can be hidden from each other so there is no
cross talk. There are no shared booting files (each OS is independent) so
Operating Systems can be deleted or added as needed.

"press810" wrote:
[.............]

Finally what about looking into An Express Card(EC) (34mm)
with eSATA port and it's own onboard BIOS. ?


Regarding this option - I tried it with an SIIG SC-SAE512-S1
eSATA II ExpressCard 2 years ago, and it didn't work with the installed
Windows Vista Business. (I don't know if the card had an *onboard*
BIOS). The laptop is a Dell XPS 1330M laptop, and although I can access
the external SATA hard drive fine after the OS has booted from internal media,
the laptop will not boot from the external drive on the PCIe card. For PCIe
cards of recent design, call the manufacturer's domestic support or sales
department. The SIIG support reps eventually told me that it wouldn't work
with any PCIe eSATA cards that they made as of 2008. Please post if you
get one to work as an external boot medium.

*TimDaniels*

Tim,

I'm using a Silicon Image 3132 PCI Express eSATA card with onboard BIOS.
I've booted WinXP from the attached HD.

"Brian K" wrote:
I'm using a Silicon Image 3132 PCI Express eSATA card with onboard BIOS. I've booted WinXP from the attached HD.


Thanks for the info. I may get one of these cards for my laptop
if it can boot Vista or Win7.

*TimDaniels*

press810,

Any feedback for the forum?

"Brian K" wrote:
Tim,

I'm using a Silicon Image 3132 PCI Express eSATA card with onboard BIOS. I've booted WinXP from the attached HD.


I have a laptop, recall, and it would use an Expresscard. And, in fact,
the SIIG Expresscard that I have, see
http://www.siig.com/ViewProduct.aspx?pn=SC-SAE512-S1 , is by SIIG's
own pronouncement, incapable of booting an OS. Did you do anything
unusual to get WinXP on your external SATA HD to boot?

*TimDaniels*

I restored an image of WinXP to the eSATA HD. Then booted the OS using BING.

Tim,

I'm a fast worker. I just ran this exercise to confirm my memory isn't
faulty.

My external HD is 320 GB (eSATA). I resized the partition to 305 GB so that
I had 15 GB of unallocated free space. I restored my WinXP image into this
space. A Boot Item was setup in BING with the Swap option enabled as the OS
wasn't on HD0. WinXP booted from the eSATA HD.

Easy. I have a whole series of backup images that I can use for tests. At
present I have over 20 bootable OS on HD0. Several WinXP, several Win7,
several Linux, several DOS, etc. All independent, courtesy of BING.

I forgot to mention that installing an OS to an eSATA HD wouldn't be a good
idea as the booting files would go to HD0. Better to install the OS to an
extra partition on HD0, create an image and restore the image to the eSATA
HD. You could then delete the extra partition on HD0.