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heppers

5 Posts

129775

April 17th, 2014 08:00

Booting from External eSATA drive

My colleague uses an eSATA drive with a custom Windows installation via the eSATA port on his HP laptop.

I need to use this for my work on my Dell E6440, I have it connected to the Dell Docking station, my standard Windows installation will recognise and readily use the drive as additional storage however even though the BIOS recognises that there is a drive connected to the eSATA port and the option appears in the "One time boot menu" it won't boot from it, I get a cursor flashing in the top left hand corner of the screen for about a minute before a message saying that it can't boot.

Removing the laptops internal drive and replacing it with the drive out of the external eSATA caddy and it works fine, as you can appreciate constantly removing and replacing the internal drive is not a permanent solution.

I did try booting from USB3 (I know it is a generally slower) but that just gave me a BSOD.

Any ideas on how to get this working please?

osprey4

4 Operator

 • 

34.2K Posts

April 17th, 2014 17:00

Hi Heppers,

What is the actual error message? How do you know the drive is bootable and that the OS is properly configured? What is the OS?

zonetrek

20 Posts

April 17th, 2014 22:00

Possibly you might have just missed to make the system/boot partition as an active partition on the drive.

heppers

5 Posts

April 18th, 2014 01:00

Zonetrek, no it can't be that or it wouldn't boot when fitted in the internal laptop drive bay.

As explained constantly swapping drives is not the ideal solution.

Osprey, thank you for the reply, I can't tell you the actual message until Tuesday (after the Easter bank holidays) as the eSATA port is on the docking station which is at work!

heppers

5 Posts

April 22nd, 2014 01:00

Actual error message when trying to boot from extarnal eSATA dock bay:

"Selected boot device failed. Press any key to reboot the system."

zonetrek

20 Posts

April 22nd, 2014 03:00

Hi Heppers, Are you trying to boot from the external eSATA with the internal drive connected in your laptop? if so. you can try these procedure: 1. Install EasyBCD to edit the boot loader 2. Plug in eSATA drive, and note the drive letter assigned to the Windows 7 partition on the eSATA drive. 3. Using EasyBCD make a new entry, call it "Windows eSATA", and tell it to find the new copy of Windows on the eSATA drive at the drive letter noted in step 2. 4. Do a reboot You will find a menu now at bootup, where you can let the internal Windows boot up by default, or choose "Windows eSATA" and boot up from Windows on the external drive. You do not need to have the eSATA drive connected unless you intend to use it.

heppers

5 Posts

April 22nd, 2014 04:00

That is a route I can't go down due to the restrictions in place on our standard network.

The installation on the internal drive needs to stay as is (or face the wrath of IT further up!)

This external installation is to administer a completely separate domain.

I did briefly try USB3 rather than eSATA but that just gave me BSOD's but didn't have the time to investigate any further, and as far as perfomance goes within Windows (an eSATA drive is recognised in Windows when booted from internal drive) the eSATA still seems faster than USB3

It's just annoying that my colleagues HP laptop will boot from it fine (although his eSATA port is on the laptop itself rather than the docking station)

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