Booting newer Inspiron off external USB hard drive

Question

It's my understanding that I should be able to boot my e1501 off an external USB hard drive provided the external drive is not bus-powered. Is this correct? Also, can anyone recommend tools for cloning the internal drive (running XP SP2) to the external drive? I've come across Casper, but I'm curious if there are better options available... All I want to be able to do is run a nightly backup to an external drive and have something I can boot off at a moment's notice in case the internal drive goes, um, belly up. Thanks, Richard

ejn63 · Answer

XP doesn't support being booted from an external drive. Vista should, though.

rfalbury · Answer

So booting XP off a flash drive by using something like PE Builder is because PE Builder builds a special version of XP? Thanks, Richard

rfalbury · Answer

Cool, thanks!

ejn63 · Answer

Yes, that is correct.

mombodog · Answer

You can boot from an external usb drive, here is how.   http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176

rfalbury · Answer

So... I imagine I should be able to install a Linux distro - say, Ubuntu - to an external USB drive and boot off that also.

mombodog · Answer

Yes that is our only limitation, Imagination, where there is a Will there is a Way!

rfalbury · Answer

Wow, many thanks, mombodog.

Storage, Drives & Media

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