Booting from external hard drive

[BarnabasSackett]

Motherboard: Asus A8N5X

So after the hard drive fiasco that I reported in another thread, I got clever and decided to create an "Emergency Boot Drive" that would have Windows on it as well as some utilities for data recovery.

I took one of the many old hard drives that I have floating around and plugged it into the compter AND unplugged my other two drives. Then I ran Windows Install off the DVD and installed Windows to the old drive. I installed my software. All was good. I plugged in the other two drives and tried to boot from the "Emergency" drive and it worked fine.

Last step was to unplug the emergency drive from the motherboard, connect it via USB and try to boot. The BIOS sees the drive and I tell it to boot from the drive.

So the computer is booting. The "Starting Windows" message comes up and then the system reboots. This happens everytime I try it.

Any ideas of what it happening here? Does Windows reset the USB ports so that the drive suddenly vanishes?

Thanks.

 

[pebbly]

Hi BarnabasSackett, As far as I am aware ,you cannot boot a windows OS from an external USB drive . It is possible to boot from a usb pendrive though

 

[AddRAM]

Hi BarnabasSackett, As far as I am aware ,you cannot boot a windows OS from an external USB drive . It is possible to boot from a usb pendrive though

Ya booting from a flash drive is incredible. From start to desktop in 15 minutes.:shock:

 

[BarnabasSackett]

I sense some sarcasm here.

 

[seavixen32]

I sense some sarcasm here.

Possibly, but the fact is you can't boot Windows 7 from an external USB drive and even if you could the process would be far too slow.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Installing-and-reinstalling-Windows-7

 

[BarnabasSackett]

Speed isn't an issue. This is for emergencies.

However, why is it that Windows won't boot from an external USB drive? I get the "Starting Windows" message. Does Windows do something strange that won't work across a USB port?

 

[Kaktussoft]

USB drivers should be loaded just after starting windows. that's the problem.
change this in registry

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\usbccgp]
"Start"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\usbehci]
"Start"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\usbhub]
"Start"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\usbohci]
"Start"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\USBSTOR]
"Start"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\usbuhci]
"Start"=dword:00000000

 

[Kaktussoft]

[project] PWBoot <Latest version: 3.0.2> - reboot.pro
easy to use to boot from usb

 

[AddRAM]

I sense some sarcasm here.

Where ? I was serious and so was Pebbly.

 

[gregrocker]

The modern method to back up your Win7 is to save to another HD or external a Win7 backup image, so that if it becomes irreparable you can reimage the HD or its replacement in 20 minutes.

If you keep your data on a separate partition (linked to a Library - Include a Folder - Windows 7 Forums)
then you'll have you current data set in place and waiting for the reimaged OS/Programs.

The only way to keep backup more current and together is mirror the HD in a RAID which is complicated and has issues of its own.