okay i have a question

Hi guys just wondering if somthing was possible or not,
If I buy an external USB harddrive can I boot from it. I need this for backup as I have diskeeper and would like to be able to make backup clones of my harddrive incase of the inevitable I can just clone back over from the backup hd. Right now i use an old internal hd i have and would just like to know wether I can boot from it if i disconnect my internal and start the system with that plugged in. The computer has windows 2000. If you need more information please let me know. I have the latest BIOS update too so that is up to date.
-the new tech guy

 

Check in your bios for the Boot sequence if you have USB0 ,usb1 ect....
if you have that you are okay i knows i did a test once i have install
windows98SE on a usb2.0 external zip drive and it work booting from it.....

My bios is 2 years old.....

 

Well my board's a bit old. Its an AOpen mx3wpro -v and according to their website the last update was done in 2002 i think so it is a bit old. I will check the system though. I know my bott sequece is my two cd rom drives, the floppy drive, then it goes to the harddrive. But I do have a zen neeon and while windows was at the splash screen it detected it and attempted a scandisk which i cancelled for fear of damageing it.
-the new tech guy

 

Alrighty Clark, i went into my bios and looked at my boot sequence and saw nothing for a usb boot. But i DID see this thing with the number LS120? The rest has my floppy, my C Drive CD rom drives, Iomega zip drive, then it shows another thing that says F like another slot. Wonder if that is zip.... Im not sure but there is USB on the motherboard and I have a 4 port 2.0 expansion on the computer. If i boot from anything i think i will end up using the onboard slots scince i am more likely to dectect them in CMOS I will look through some more to see if there is a solution to this. If you have any could you let me know?
-the new tech guy

 

Well I looked around my cmos some more and lo and behold! not sure if it will help or not but it has this option that says other boot device and it is enabled. It says that it will boot from another bootable device other than the ones listed if it is dected and availible. I may just have to take a leap of faith here and buy one and see what happens.
-the new tech guy

 

yep i think this is your only chance try it if you have usb zipdrive boot
i think they're is a good chance that others boot device will work....

Did you try going to your mobo sites AOpen and go to thery're forum and ask if it will work ???

 

An LS120 is like a large capacity zip drive (floppy drive) from memory.

The problem with booting from an external source has many factors.

The first one is mother/board bios support, although it doesn't always work even when it's supported, and the second is Windows, especially with SP2.

All you can do is try. External hard drives are very handy.

 

Havent checked out the AOpen forums about it but i have the latest version of the bios for my mobo installed. And yes windows does support USB on boot because sometimes i forget to unplug my mp3 player from USB when i reboot the system and windows detects it during boot and tries to do a scandisk to it. Also im running win2k not xp and clark already tried it with win98 se and it worked fine. If i am correct insomniac, when i buy a USB harddrive it will come with a BIOS rig to make it detect the USB if the bios wont support it just like when i bought the internal seagate for the computer it came with a mod for the BIOS that will make the system detect the full space of the hd. I was checking proces yesterday and i found an 80 GB western digital for $90 on tigerdirect which i think is plenty for me and considering that im a highschool student and money is a rare commodity, thats a deal. I had an idea of maybe taking it to a small tech shop nearby and see if they will let me use a usb hd and test the computer to see if it will boot from it if i throw windows on it or somthing but they will prob charge for that. I think that would make life much easier for me to use an external hd for backup rather than having to dismantle my computer every month so i can have a backup rather than have to take my computer apart so i can hook up a old 10 GB hd and have to play with jumpers all the time. I will just have to take a leap of faith here and try one i guess.
-the new tech guy

 

Just to clarify, I know Windows works with external USB drives, but the point is that it's far from perfect.

USB drives only became popular post Windows, and people experience a lot of problems.

And again just to clarify, I think they are very handy and worth the effort.

 

Ok i just wanted to fill you in on that much incase that was important. I did look around the AOpen forums a bit and i did not notice anything i may have to search google or maybe i can ask someone about it... well off to google on a possaible answer.
-the new tech guy

 

Well remember that LS120 prot i mentioned and everyone said it was a zip drive? Well, there are two things there the LS120 AND a zip option! Im really confused now.
-the new tech guy

 

No, they said it was LIKE a zip drive. It's actually a special floppy type disk, commonly referred to as a "Superdisk", which can hold up to 120MB of data, thus the LS120 drive name.

 

I just googled the superdisk and now know what that is. If that supports them EXTERNALLY which i think it wil maybe i can trick BIOS into booting from an hd by hooking it up and setting the bios boot sequence to go through the LS120 thing and it MAY just pick it up as a giant superdisk. I am going to use the western digital tech support to see if they have a clear cut way of telling wether this can be done or not. Thanks for all the help so far and sticking with me through this.
-the new tech guy

 

Okey dokey, I just emailed western digital a support email thingy and when they get back to me. By the way here is the hd that i found: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1088422&CatId=0

Let you people know what happens when i hear from western digital and post the response and the question.
-the new tech guy

 

Alrighty well i found a better deal on a hd at bestbuy so i bought that one today. Sof forget the western digital one for now. So right ow i was actually surprised that diskwizard (which i use to backup) actually found the new hd on the usb hookup. So right now i started to clone the system to the new external hd. Once this is done i will test the bios to see if i can boot on the new hd by disconnecting the normal internal one and leaving that as the only hd connected to the computer and see what the BIOS does with it. I probably will not get to test-booting the new hd till tomorrow as it is late and i have to go back to school tomorrow. In the meantime however, I will be running darik's boot and nuke on the old backup drive while i am at school. Once that is done we will test-boot the new hd. I will keep everyone posted as details become availible.
-the new tech guy

 

Alrighty been trying different setups in BIOS and the boot is still a no-go and i do have my system cloned to the hd.
-the new tech guy

 

I was thinking about your problem so i don't knows if this program exist but
here we go what i was thinking is booting from a 3 1/2 disk like windows
98se then switching to your usb external harddisk and make it start
i think you will need somekind of usb driver to detect your external harddisk...
then try running your new drive ???

I will try searching for this .......

 

Ok let me try to make sense of what your saying, correct me if im wrong but your saying to make like a windows 98 emergency boot disk and use that to initialize the system and them it should direct itself to the floppy? That may work with my actual OS which is win2k. Also i noticed some new thing in the CMOS boot sequence and it said SCSI? Could that be the drive the CMOS is seeing and for some odd reason cannot boot from? I will try the boot disk idea though. Sounds logical. Only hope it is smart enough to go through the system and find the drive on usb as i will disable my internal hd from the CMOS this way it does not boot from that. Well i will give the boot disk idea a shot and get back to you. Thanks for the help so far. I have been all over google for a possible bios tweak so that CMOS will see the hd. Although i do not see why i am having such a problem cause it supports usb keyboards. I will give the boot disk idea a shot.
-the new tech guy
ps: if you find somthing that may help online let me know and i will give it a shot.

 

your saying to make like a windows 98 emergency boot disk and use that to initialize the system

Yes.

But after i am still searching by the way, you need anothers disk 3 1/2
with usb DOS driver to detect your new external harddrive because with
the boot disk is in DOS you need some DOS driver...

I knows they DOS driver for usb did not found the right one yet...

Maybe the compagny that made your harddisk they have dos driver for your
usb harddisk ???

 

Ok sorry for slow reply, hectic week. I do have an old windows 95 boot disk from an old pc way back in the day and when booted from it gets me to msdos. The drive is a maxtor personal storage 3100. I remember that windows 98 was largely based on dos so i wonder if i create a boot disk which i did from the knowledge base for win2k u know ntdetect.com and whatnot what if i load the driver to a floppy, then run it through dos? I will try that and see if i get anywhere.
-the new tech guy

 

OR maybe if you can find me a bootloader that i can simply run from cd that detects usb harddrives. Cause i think LILO will. I can burn it to cd and run it from there so that i never have to add anything to any hd.
-the new tech guy

 

CAn i get into this boot disk thing from the windows 98 cd because it has this thing where i can make it boot to DOS on the cd simply by inserting it and and selecting the second option at the first promp and i have no pc with windows 98 loaded on it to make one. But i am searching the internet for a program that will see the drive and allow me to boot from it into windows from the ms dos that it is in.
-the new tech guy

 

Ok i got an emergency boot disk for win98 and when i load it i get to MSDOS. So now what do i do?
-the new tech guy

 

the new tech guy wrote

Ok i got an emergency boot disk for win98 and when i load it i get to MSDOS. So now what do i do?

okay you got the first part i forget to tell you to download a boot disk you can go to www.bootdisk.com

Now you will need to find a usb driver in dos the driver will detect you harddisk then you should able to access it....

Has already said i think this is just and idea i did not tested anyway
so but i think this should work...

They others idea i have thinking about it's to upgrade your mobo so i don't knows how much it will cost ???

Just the mobo is it possible......

 

I went there too. I was looking at alot of stuff while just hunting around yahoo! Some have to do with tweaking the boot.ini file. I have a maxtor driver for win98. But it is to large to fit on floppy and i am afraid to zip it scince i dont know wether DOS will see it or not. And when i run the installer in win2k it bugs out and tells me i need windows 98 to install it. Scince 98 is very DOS based i am wondering if i can do somthing there where maybe i install it then i guess i would burn the files to cd with the boot thing and that will cover it?
-the new tech guy

 

And what do i download at bootdisk.com?

 

I have been all over the place on the internet looking for somthing with no luck. Could some linux fix possibly save us. If there are any linux knowledgeable people in here with a solution to this it would be greatly appreciated if you can help me out here.
-the new tech guy

 

Alrighty well i think i made progress because i tried this driver: http://www.stefan2000.com/darkehorse/PC/DOS/Drivers/USB/USBCDROM.EXE
and it seemed to actually see somthing but i am not sure if it did or not because i get the error: invalid perimeter when it is run. So i am not sure if that means it worked or if i have to do somthing else to connect it up. Also when i do actually get the system to see the drive how will i get the system to start windows from it because that is what i want it to do.
-the new tech guy

 

I may just throw the towel in because i have gone crazy with this thing and do not think im gettin anywhere with it. I hate to do this but im just running in circles with the same stuff i have been seeing. So im gonna clean up my computer and prob trade it for an internal one when i return it to bestbuy tomorrow.
-the new tech guy

 

Im just giving up the project cause all it did was take me in pointless circles but i did not leave empty handed. I did learn how to tweak a boot.ini file so you can change how the windows bootloader works and use it to boot from the second hd without having to jockey the drives between primary and secondary jumpers. So dont think this was wasted effort. Cause you cant win all the time .
-the new tech guy

 

okay then, i did not reply i was busy shopping for upgrading my pc

 

Hadsimilar plans for my sis. Gonna drop a new mobo in my computer, nice p4 chip, load xp then give it to her and then treat myself to a nice new laptop with vista if its out by then. Cant till i start workin though. Well thanks for your help though .
-the new tech guy