I'm trying to fix my mom's computer. I suspect her hdd is bad. I want to take my ide internal hdd and boot her computer with it. If I do this, can I still boot from my external firewire (pci) hdd? I don't see a problem unless the "front end" of Windows doesn't look at the pci bus for drives on POST.

I'm a lil' rusty with my computer hardware knowledge, as you can probably see, but I'm assuming that if I am able to install the OS on that drive then I should have no problems booting and running Windows from it. Any input? Yes? No? Maybe?

Thanks.

BTW, running XP pro.

I'm trying to fix my mom's computer. I suspect her hdd is bad. I want to take my ide internal hdd and boot her computer with it. If I do this, can I still boot from my external firewire (pci) hdd? I don't see a problem unless the "front end" of Windows doesn't look at the pci bus for drives on POST.

I'm a lil' rusty with my computer hardware knowledge, as you can probably see, but I'm assuming that if I am able to install the OS on that drive then I should have no problems booting and running Windows from it. Any input? Yes? No? Maybe?

Thanks.

BTW, running XP pro.

this is just me ... but I would not boot from the HD i nthe other PC if you intend to put it back in the other PC ... unless it's the same model PC ... if you are going to put the drive "as-is" back into the other pc ... it'll load all kinds of drivers and stuff ... it'll probably work just fine, but its something I would not do w/ my HD :)

bootint from the external drive should work ... I assume you need to tell the bios to boot from the exxternal device ... maybe a seperate bios on the pci 1394 card ???? I'm not sure how it would boot from the external drive otherwise.

it might work, it might not.
Depends on the bios of the motherboard.

From what I recall it has to support INT 13 Calls.
If it doesnt do that, once the OS tries taking control of the firewire drive it'll puke.
Meaning MSDOS would probably work, or any OS that runs on top of msdos.. but probably not 2000 or XP.


also, there is no guarantee that your HD would boot in her machine.. it is quite likely that it would just bluescreen when it tried loading the disk controller.

I've seen it done with a USB drive, but only because the bios had the option to boot from one. Never seen it done with firewire.:shrug:

you have seen it boot all the way into windows XP?

Linux, but I bet it can be done with XP.
If you still have the drive with the OS, and put it in a USB enclosure, and tell the bios to boot from usb, it just might work. Worth a shot anyway.

ahhh.. Linux is a different story.
I dont think it will work with XP and USB.
FIREWIRE maybe, depending on the BIOS..
But from what I have read XP will puke when the OS tries to take control of the USB controller.
This is microsoft after all.... :|
It will take them a while to catch up.
ahh hell I work for the govt. I havent got anything better to do.
I'll give it a shot on a couple different boxes and let ya'll know if it works.
:D

ahhh.. Linux is a different story.
I dont think it will work with XP and USB.
FIREWIRE maybe, depending on the BIOS..
But from what I have read XP will puke when the OS tries to take control of the USB controller.
This is microsoft after all.... :|
It will take them a while to catch up.
ahh hell I work for the govt. I havent got anything better to do.
I'll give it a shot on a couple different boxes and let ya'll know if it works.
:D


if the controller supports it (1394, USB ... what ever) it'll work. ... just like SCSI adapters will work if the adapter supports boot-up's from connected devices. ... if its on-board, the PC's BIOS would have to support it. OS should not matter if the hardware supports boot-up, and the Os is capable of having drivers for the evice once it does boot-up.

So far this does not appear to be the case..

I did an experiment just now to see if I could get XP to install and boot from a USB2 hard drive.

I booted off a XP sp2 install CD.. the installer saw the USB hard drive, partitioned it and installed the initial set up files to the disk.
Machine rebooted, booted off the USB hard drive, and the progress bar in the DOS window sped across the screen OK..
Then the windows XP splash screen popped up, as ususal.. but then it blue screened, which is exactly what I read will happen.

I can boot off a USB thumb drive to DOS just fine.. it's when XP tries to hook the USB drive that things puke.

Later on I will try sticking my laptops hard drive in an external enclosure and see if it boots off of that.

I will also give the firewire port a try.. I think if anything will work it will be the firewire port.

I wonder if you can copy working partition (ghost) to a 2+ gig Thumb Drive?

I was gonna ghost my partition to the USB drive, but it was taking forever and I had stuff I needed to do. I might try it on monday.
you'd probably have to edit the boot.ini file too wouldnt ya?