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Possible install XP on USB drive?

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Possible install XP on USB drive?

Postby corsal » Thu Mar 18, 2010 11:13 am

I have Vista on my C drive (not preinstalled, came with the disks), the drive is not partitioned . Desktop computer 2 years old, mid-high range specs. I have an external 300GB hard disk, partitioned (K: L: M: P:), connects to the Desktop computer via USB. It is not a flash drive, it is a proper hard drive.
- If I want to have a Vista-XP dual boot system, can I leave Vista on the C: internal drive and install XP on the EXTERNAL hard disk? I would not want to buy DualBootPro and then discover that this is not possible.
- If it is possible, any expected trouble?, or will it work exactly the same as if the dual boot was with both OS in different partitions of the same internal hard disk?
- If possible, and after all installed and working, and dual boot system is working, then what if one day the external disk is not connected when booting, will this cause any trouble? Or it will simply boot from Vista since there is no other bootable drive attached.

Apologies is this has been already answered elsewhere, did my best to look for a FAQs section and did a search but did not find any answers to this
Thanks in advance
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Re: Possible install XP on USB drive?

Postby JabbaPapa » Thu Mar 18, 2010 11:58 am

It should be quite possible to do that, *provided* that you can locate all the necessary drivers to get XP running on your computer, although given that your plan is to install to the USB drive it is quite possible that all necessary drivers for installation are included in the XP setup CD. However there are a number of things that can go wrong in that scenario, so that I would personally advise you to create a personalised XP setup CD containing the SATA drivers for your motherboard, using nLite for example. Hopefully this would ensure that your Vista and your XP will be able to see each other during setup, so as to avoid some potential headaches.

Installing XP will uninstall the Vista boot loader, so that you will need to restore it, which DualBootPro will allow you to do.

You can then setup your computer dual boot as desired, according to your needs and your wishes, although depending on how the XP setup proceeds you may or may not need to copy some XP boot files from one location to another...

Good luck with it !!
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Re: Possible install XP on USB drive?

Postby corsal » Thu Mar 18, 2010 1:46 pm

Many thanks JabbaPapa.
- The SATA drivers for my motherboard... where/how can I find them in my computer, so I can instruct nLite to include them in the XP setup CD... or are they something I need to download from somewhere, e.g. Intel site?
-Do you think it might be easier for a novice like me to simply partition the C: drive that currently has VISTA and try installing it in this partition of the same C: internal drive? i.e. fewer chances of anything going wrong.
- Would that save me from preparing an XP setup CD using nLite. Or would you reccomend to do it anyway?
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