If you mean a USB thumb/flash drive then no. Flash drives work using a logic gate, meaning that after about 1 million accesses to certain parts of the drive, it will stop working completely and the data unrecoverable.

 

If you mean an external hard drive, then maybe.

 

With a partition manager such as PartitionMagic 8.0, you might be able to install another Operating System on another drive. It should not be the Active parition, however.

 

But yes, if the Master File Table is told that there is a new partition that links to an external hard drive, in theory, it should work.

 

I hope that helps!

 

Robert

thanks for reply

 

i mean an external hdd it runs on own ac power an connects to pc via usb port

 

so i take it this is possible, could you please explain if it is how to go about doing it, i didnt quite follow what you said before

 

how would i go about installing xp to the external hdd?

 

my usb hdd is about 80gb and is empty,  

 

thanks for your help hope to hear  from you soon

In Partition Magic 8.0, there is the option to "Install another Operating System", upon which I assume, you are able to make a partition on the external hard drive that will host the OS, then you will be prompted to restart probably and asked to insert the installation CD for that OS. Partition Magic will then install a Boot Manager so that when it boots up, it will give you the choice of which OS you want to boot. You can only load one OS at a time, however, unless you do something called "virtual machine", but that can be very resource-dranining and that is a different thing altogether.

 

Here is a quote from the User Guide:

 

You can create a new partition especially designed for an operating system. The wizard
prompts you to select the operating system you plan to install. Then it creates a partition
that will work for that operating system—including the right size, the proper boot code
boundary, and so forth. When you use the wizard, you do not need to know all the
requirements of the operating system because the wizard will handle it for you.
If you want the ability to switch between installed operating systems when you boot your
computer, it is recommended that you install Norton™ BootMagic® before running this
wizard.
You should print the instructions displayed when you click the View Instructions button
in the wizard. They will help you install an operating system to the new partition after you
have completed the wizard.

 

(ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/products/norton_partitionmagic/npmagic_8/manuals/norton_partitionmagic_8.pdf)

 

If you were going to take that external HDD to another computer, in order to boot it, you could probably just go to F12 or whatever and tell it to boot to the USB device's partition - but I am not certain. You might need a boot manager (Boot Magic, part of Partition Magic) on that computer as well that will recognise the external HDD as boot-able. As for knowing the right partition, it should be simple enough to set the OS that is in the partition as "Active", so that is the parition that F12 will boot to.

 

If you need something clarifying then just ask ;)

 

Robert

ok thanks

 

could i use the disk managment tool in vista to creata a partition then vista boot pro, or do i need to buy this partition manager 8?

 

thanks for your help

 

 

 

just checked and it seems magic partition 8 wont work on vista, which is the os i run on my pc,  if i use someone elses pc to put the xp os on my external hd will i be able to boot it on mine?

 

 

You did say that there is nothing on your external hard drive anyway so I don't think you need to make a new partition on it.

 

You cannot use the Vista software because that does not include the feature of installing another Operating System onto another drive.

 

I've got something you can try out if you want to, this is an alternative to using special software and this will reveal if you or cannot install an OS on another drive.

 

Get the XP CD and put it into your computer when it boots up, and hit Enter to load the CD. Wait until it loads the drivers, then  hit Enter to setup Win XP. Press F8 to accept the EULA.

 

Now, you are given a list of all the drives on your computer.

If it is technically possible to install it on the external HDD, it will list that external HDD, and you can follow through the instructions to install XP on that.

Just remember that to continue setting it up you will need to boot the computer to the USB hard drive - if you can, go into the BIOS Setup and enable USB support if you can.

 

In theory as long as you do not tamper with your Vista installation or let that blue Windows Setup touch anything on your computer's HDD then it should install to the external one.

 

---

 

Now for your question - the answer is yes, I think. If you manage to get XP installed on that external hard drive, you should be able to tell the computer to boot to the USB device when you turn it on, and XP will load from that drive.

 

I would not recommend moving that external hard drive to another computer however, because when you set it up, the installation will install the drivers that are needed for the computer it is connected to. If you then plug it into a completely different one, the XP installation on that external HDD won't have the same drivers as the new computer needs - it is possible that it will still boot and everything will work but it is not guaranteed that it will work for another computer.

 

I hope that helps you a bit!

 

Robert