external hard drive

I have a acomdata 320g external hard drive. I have my system backed up on it. Does anyone know if I can use this drive to install a separate os and install some of my games on it. I want to keep my games separate from my primary system. Acomdata says I have to "dismount the drive" in order to shut it down. If I do that, the computer does not recognize the drive. can someone tell me if I can do a new install on this drive. I want to use xp professional on it. thank you

 

Welcome to MajorGeeks! Are you wanting to boot off the drive using USB, or just take the drive out of the enclosure and use it in the computer? When you post a question like this, it helps to post the specs of the machine in question. Is it a laptop, desktop, and what kind of mobo, that kind of stuff.

You could easily set up a 2 hard drive system, one for work, one for games with 2 hard drives in a desktop. Just hook them up internally and use the BIOS boot options to boot to either one. If you are wanting to run a computer off an external drive, I would think you would take a performance hit.

E:cool

 

Thanks for the quik reply. I have a pci express 64 bit athlon 3000. 1 gig of ram.on a asus motherboard. Also gforce 6600 card.
I would prefer to run a separate system on my external hardrive (usb 2). Never thought of performance, but your probably right it would suffer on performance. I think I will just buy a drive on ebay and run 2 hd on my computer each with its own OS. Thanks again

 

Why not save your money and use the drive you have? Take the drive out of the enclosure and hook it up.

And hit the Post Reply button, not the quote button, unless you want to quote yourself!

And again, welcome to the forums, some of us, myself included have a strange sense of humor!

Eric