Run Windows XP from an external USB drive?

r2015

Works with all laptops that have a 9.5mm SATA optical bay.

That rules that out then.

Johnmcl7

There is an equivalent device for D-series modular bays:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SATA-2nd-Hard-drive-Caddy-Dell-D500-D600-D620-D630-D800-/350325269045

It states no SSD's though and I can't find any further details which confirm that.

John

EdwardB

retired2011 wrote: »

I have a Dell Latitude D600 laptop with XP.

I use it mainly for reading e-books and printing to an old HP laser printer that does not have 64 bit drivers.

The hard drive is on the way out, it makes lots of rattling noises.

I was going to fit an SSD that I have spare but it is a SATA drive and the Dell is IDE.

Is there a way to get the laptop to boot from and run XP without an internal drive in it?

Well to answer the question you actually asked, you can run a kind of XP emulator off USB by downloading (on a different PC) a Hiren Boot Disk and then making a bootable USB.

You should be aware that of you want any kind of data recovery you need to STOP using the damaged hard disk, is a bit like when people keep driving their car after engine damage and wonder why they have to spend £5k on it.

As others have kindly pointed out you have other options

1. Buy a supercheap IDE 2.5 inch drive off eBay, then ghosting what you can from current disk to new disk.

2. Install a caddy from eBay for the CD drive that holds SSD, you will need to find one for your model of computer.

3. Install small footprint version of Linux on USB or CD boot.

EdwardB

Tarambor wrote: »

Is not true. No idea where you're getting that information from but there have been plenty of endurance tests done showing consumer grade SSDs available of having the equivalent to tens of gigabytes of data a day written to them for a decade before failing which is far more than you would do in normal use.

were wrote: »

You do realise that SSD die sooner than normal drives..., unless you drop them. When they go it is a sudden loss of everything, and no rattling noise warning. No easy recovery route. Expensive.

They are fast though, you need lots of speed for a book reader .

However I do not think the D600 supports SSD, this is according to http://www.crucial.com/

You did get thin convertors on ebay that support ide to ssd drives and you may be able to shoe-horn one in

Well he is getting it from the company with the largest number of servers in the world,

GOOGLE/ZDNET wrote: »

Using data from millions of drive days in Google datacenters, a new paper offers production lifecycle data on SSD reliability. Surprise! SSDs fail differently than disks - and in a dangerous way. Here's what you need to know.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/ssd-reliability-in-the-real-world-googles-experience/

I know some people are in the "SSD solves everything" camp and in some situations they do, but in this case may not even be an option.

were

Tarambor wrote: »

Is not true. No idea where you're getting that information from but there have been plenty of endurance tests done showing consumer grade SSDs available of having the equivalent to tens of gigabytes of data a day written to them for a decade before failing which is far more than you would do in normal use.

Well it was out server manufacturer that warned us about SSD. They supply a 32gb drive. Apparently the test copy and delete data for long time period and all works fine. VM, once loaded, stay up for months, is mainly held in ram so were told not much of an issue either.

The issue was with windows and small SSD, which as it gets fuller keep writing more to the same memory areas, and the average cell has a life if about 3000 writes, killed through paging files. For them SSD have been found less reliable. Many people let their drives fill are in similar positions.

Looking around see that the consensus is ssd offer better reliability. mine has been faultless in over 3 years, but I only use 25% and hope Wear leveling spreads the writes equally around.