external sata or pata

Question

Do any of the Dell notebooks already have a port to attach an external sata or pata (ide) hard drive? If not, does it take adding a pcmcia controller card to do this? If so, is there a pcmcia controller the BIOS recognizes to boot from?

Rollie_R · Answer

pvwebb,   There are no ports specifically for external hard drives.  Most external drives are either IEEE1394 or USB, and most Dell portables have both of these ports.    Dell systems have four-pin unpowered IEEE1394 ports, and low power USB ports, so you may need an external power supply for an external hard drive.   I know that you can boot to the USB port, but this is generally intended for use with thumb drives.  I cannot guarantee that you will be able to boot to an external drive, though it may work.  You cannot boot to an ExpressCard (most new systems no longer have PCMCIA card slots) connected drive, as far as I know.

pvwebb · Answer

From what I understand the only external hard drives that will boot Windows 2000, XP, or Vista are external SATA or IDE (PATA) drives because it doesn't distinguish them from internal drives. It's true that BartPE will allow you to boot a rescue version of Windows off a USB drive, but not the fully operational Windows OS. Otherwise, to boot of a USB drive, you're limited to DOS, Linux, Win95, Win98, WinME, or WinNT.

Biggles615 · Answer

Hi I have a Dell Inspiron 6400 and cannot get my PC to identify (see) my external SATA drive connected via USB port. I have previously used an external 2.5' IDE drive in a caddy and connected OK. Have now upgraded to 100 gb external SATA 2.5' disk in SATA caddy and connected by USB, and nada, nothing! The disk has been formatted, but still cannot be seen. Any ideas, anybody? Thanks in advance.

Storage, Drives & Media

external sata or pata

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