is it possible to boot up XP in an external 1TGB backup drive ???

tight-git

interesting question here i think, just brought a Acer Aspire One (120G, 1G ram ver) , and will be buying a BIG backup USB external drive , like this 1
https://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials...roductId=30998 as its v cheap and useful...:j

,as the Acer is on Linux and i might as well leave it there (cos i dont know / cant be asked! to inatall XP / Vista there) and when im back indoor ,then bootup from the external hard drive into XP ???

i have read ,someone can even run XP on a thumb usb drive, but why , if i have it on the ext drive is it faster? bigger ? :T


thanks in advance..:beer:

basmic

You could run XP on a USB pen drive, but I wouldn't recommend it because of how slow they are - not to mention the limited write cycles.

I've never tried installing and running XP from a USB harddrive before, but, as long as the BIOS allows you to bootup from a USB device, I don't see why not.

shadowdragon

why not set your pc to dual boot, Linux and XP and you pick when you start the PC up?

IcyEars

Yes, you can do it. As long as you are only using it on one PC and the BIOS supports USB booting. I've got my external USB drive with XP and Linux on it and I use it for rescuing dead PC's.

The only problem is that it is slower than the internal harddrive (USB 2 is 480 Mbit/s but SATA is 1.5 - 3 GBit/s) and if you use it on another PC it might throw a wobbler because you are trying to use it with different hardware.

Personally, I'd go with shadowdragon and repartition the internal hdd on the laptop and install XP on there so you have a choice of which one you want to use.

You didn't say which version of Linux you are using but google dual boot XP and [linux version] and you'll get loads of instructions on how to do it. XP will overwrite the bootloader for Linux though so you will need to reinstall the Linux one (Lilo/Grub etc) after putting XP on.

tight-git

thanks guys, think i will give the linux a week trial -i dont know the ver as its arriving on monday - think its a Acer special ver ,4 split screen blah blah..in

if its not for me then i might just install Xp in it then ...and THEN i can use Linux - if i want to , from a USB thumb ...


the main thing is the compatability of the Excel and Words , obviously the www is fine as its firefox anyway..



thanks again