I need a usb genius...lolol Can this be done?

Hi all, I have an external seagate 320g usb hard drive, I would like to know if this is possible?

1. partition the drive into like 4 partitions..(I understand how to do this already)
2. have partition 1 have windows 7 boot disc to install windows from usb drive
3. Have a windows xp boot disc to install from usb drive

I know how to get the xp boot etc in the partition, but I would like to be able to plug the drive in, select usb drive as boot device in bios, and have it search for both OS's and give the option of which to boot from.....Can this be done?...I heard something would have to be done to the usb hard drive o make it bootable in a dos environment, but not sure.....Can someone enlighten me on this?????...This would be awesome if I could pull it off...Thanks for expertise in advance....Dirtylarry

You enumerate placing Win7 and XP installers on separate partitions on external which would be for the purpose of installing the OS's.

In the next paragraph you say you want to "have it search for both OS's and give the option of which to boot from.."

An installer is not the same as an OS. Do you want to boot the installer to install Win7 from external, or do you want to boot the OS from the external?

The former can be done with a 3rd party boot manager, the latter cannot be done without great trouble, horrible performance and unresolvable licensing issues.

Lol wow...well it was like 4 am when I posted...sorry for the confusion

What I meant was boot from the two seperate partitions to perform installs etc
etc...not. run the is from the drive...what 3rd party software can achieve this?...thanks a bunch.

I've asked for some other ideas on this, as I am sure there is a boot manager which will do this but can't recall it.

I have a 8gb Kingston Data Traveler stick I carry in my pocket as a toolbox. I have bootsected it with UltraISO to write Win7 installer to it. I can then keep the Win7 installer files in a folder when not booting it, or spill the Vista files out into the root to boot Vista installer if I choose that. All my other tools are mixed in with these folders.

However, XP installer requires different bootsecting so it would need to be managed another way on your external. Hopefully someone will know for sure.

Thanks Greg....I am able to boot the windows 7 from this drive, but only if its on the root...If I make 2 seperate partitions, I can't get it to work....it says bootloader not found etc etc..blah blah....trying to get it so I have windows7 on one partition, and windows xp on the other....Or can I put them both in the seperate partitions, and then just slide one or the other to root possibly?.....Hope Im not confusing you too much......Dirty

One thing I have done is to create 2 partitions on my 80 gig external- a 10 gig FAT32 at the front of the disk and a larger NTFS in the balance. I then marked the 10 gig partition as active in windows disk management and unloaded the contents of the win7 install dvd into it. Then at boot (with the external connected), I tapped F12 and selected usb storage and it booted up nicely from the 10 gig partition (windows is loading files....blah blah).

What I'm going to try next is to carve out another 10 gig or so FAT32 partition from the larger one, dump XP cd contents into it, mark that partition active, then see whether I can boot from it just like booting from an xp disk.

Reason why I'm telling you all this is it could be one possible way.

How did you go about partitioning etc.?

Hi Bill2...ok, I did the same as you...and it works....I know that xp doesnt work this way though....you have to do alot more work to get it to work this way..im still learning that part....but not sure how the boot sequence is going to turn out, Ill let you know when i know...hopefully tonight, or tomorrow...if ya beat me to it.....then let me know...lol.... The CD Forum -> USB Booting

dirtylarry said:

Hi Bill2...ok, I did the same as you...and it works....I know that xp doesnt work this way though....you have to do alot more work to get it to work this way..im still learning that part....but not sure how the boot sequence is going to turn out, Ill let you know when i know...hopefully tonight, or tomorrow...if ya beat me to it.....then let me know...lol.... The CD Forum -> USB Booting

Wonder how it'll turn out if I just create a folder called "XP" on the 10 gig win7 files partition on the external, then dump the XP cd contents into it, then boot from that partition using win7 files, navigate to command prompt, then navigate to the XP folder and launch setup from there?

hmm....not sure on that...but if you try....make sure when you copy your files from xp cd that you "show hidden files"...to get them all....let me know...Im googling still on this scenario...Dirty

You'll need a boot manager for the external, I believe.