Booting off external HD

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Hi,

I am hoping that somebody here may have the answer to my problem.

I am running XP Pro on my computer, with a 360GB hard disk partitioned:

System C:

Data D:

Media E:

Backup F:

I have recently purchased a 1TB sata external drive, this is connected by ESATA cable, I cloned my internal HD to the External HD using Acronis Home Image 9, so far so good.

I will explain my intention here, I do a lot of photo work with Photoshop, with both my own images and photo restoration and I intended to strip off any unwanted programs and other junk and have a lean, clean machine for my photo work.

OK I know I could have done a clean install of XP but (a) I’m lazy and (b) downloading all the required updates uses up just about all all my monthly download allowance.

My intention was to switch off the internal HD and boot to the external HD when I wanted to do photo work, then when I wanted to change back do the reverse – internal HD on- External HD off.

Tried that, booted to external drive and got the message at boot “NTLDR is missing – Press Ctl/Alt/Delete to restart. when I attempted to reboot the internal drive I got the same message, I now had two OS’s and neither would boot.

Eventually overcame that problem and got the internal drive booting, my next idea was to use a boot manager, so I downloaded GAG4 boot manager and tried with it, claimed it could boot up to 9 OS’s including on different drives.

It is supposed to hide the active partitions of the other OS’s to avoid conflicts but that is not how it worked out for me, remembering I cloned the internal drive to the external it has the same partitions containing the same data, when I choose to boot the external drive it should hide all the partitions on the internal drive and the external drive should assume the drive letters of the original – C:, D:, E:, F:, this it does not do, it makes the system partition of the external drive, Drive C: the system partition of the internal drive, Drive D: and then moves the partitions of the internal drive up one letter and hides all the non drive partitions on the external drive.

This as a result breaks the linkage to any data on the internal drive and it can’t access it on the external drive because the partitions are hidden, plus the OS runs so slow that it is unusable.

Then when I ditch the bootloader ( I am running it off CD until I get it working OK) I then have to use Partition Magic to unhide the partitions on the external drive.

I can’t see what I am missing here, the external SATA drive should operate a fast as the internal and by switching 1 drive off and the other on should be the same as having only one drive installed.

Does anybody have any thoughts on how I can get this to happen?

Thanks for you help.

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I would try EasyBCDto fix your Windows Boot Manager. Unfortunately I’m not sure the Windows Boot Manager would work correctly if the Ext HD were not always connected, but using EasyBCD should allow you to then choose which installation to use. The biggest problem you may have however, is that having 2 copies of you OS (first on your hard drive, second on your Ext HD) both of which you boot to may go against the MS EULA. Generally this is not allowed. These 2 copies would both be using the same key which is not allowed by MS. Perhaps someone else could comment on the legality of this.

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These 2 copies would both be using the same key which is not allowed by MS. Perhaps someone else could comment on the legality of this.

Should’nt be a problem IMHO as your only using one at a time.

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Thanks for your reply, Will check out EasyBDC, could be the answer.

Re: The legality, I can’t see a real problem as I would only be using 1 OS at any time on the computer it is registered to, besides every time I make a backup image of my drive it contains a copy of the OS.

Will see what other views come forth regarding this.

Thanks for taking the time to help me.

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Thanks for your reply, Will check out EasyBDC, could be the answer.

Re: The legality, I can’t see a real problem as I would only be using 1 OS at any time on the computer it is registered to, besides every time I make a backup image of my drive it contains a copy of the OS.

Will see what other views come forth regarding this.

Thanks for taking the time to help me.

Ah, but the image is not a bootable copy. I am just unsure about this. There are several Loungers more cognizant of the EULA implications than I.

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I cloned my internal HD to the External HD using Acronis Home Image 9, so far so good.

In Acronis, did you choose “Disk Backup” rather than “Clone Disk” ?

What is the ESATA External HD connected to on the PC? A PCI add-in card? The connection on the PC may not support the fastest speeds.

What does the BIOS see for drives?

Has BIOS for internal HD been turned Off?

More specs on the system may help.

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Ted Myer,

Tried out EasyBCD, unfortunately it doesn’t work with out Windows Vista, to use it on an XP machine requires getting the bootloader from a Vista installation, that I don’t have access to.

Thanks for the suggestion.
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Roderunner,

That was may take on the legality, I would also suspect that most dual boots are using the OS from a Previous computer.

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Tim Sullivan,

I Acronis I chose “Clone Disk” as that was the recomended method.

The External HD is connected through a SATA/ESATA adapter. The motherboard and Ext HD are both SATA II.

The BIOS see’s all the drives and see’s the Ext SATA drive as an internal drive.

Specs:

Board: Gigabyte G31M-ES2L

Processor: 2.6Ghz Intell Pentium Dual-Core

RAM: 2G

Hard Drives:

Drive 0: Hitachi HDT721032SLA360, 320 GB

Drive 1: WDC WD10EARS-00Y5B1. 1000 GB

Drive 2; ST336032 OAS USB Device (HD) 360GB

OS; Xp Pro.

My primary drive was configured with 4 partitions.

Local Disk C
Data D
Media E
Backup F

I cloned this disk to the new drive using Acronis True Image Home 2009 as a result it contains the same partitions, with the primary OS active the drive order is now:

Local Disk C
Data D
Media E
Backup F
Iomega G ( a USB external hard drive)
Local Disk H (The new HD)
Data I
Media J
Backup K

I found OSL2000 boot manager and downloaded a copy to see if that would solve the problem.

I can now boot the secondary hard drive, when in that OS all the partitions on the primary drive are hidden and the drive order now becomes:

Local Disk C
Data H
Media I
Backup J
Iomega K.

The result is that it has broken the links between all the programs on the primary partition and any data files on the other partitions.

Had it assigned the rest of the drive letters the same as the primary drive it would all work OK

Probably some simple work-around for this but at present I just don’t see it.

Any suggestions would be helpful, I am afraid with age My “RAM” has become corrupted and hasn’t retained much of what I did know about the inner workings of a PC.

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Hi Max – It looks like there is a 320 GB Hitachi and a 360 GB Seagate (USB) in addition to your new Western Digital 1 TB. The previous posts did not mention a Hitachi “320GB” hard drive. Is that a bootable drive? It looks like that one is the first to boot.
Drive 0: Hitachi HDT721032SLA360, 320 GB

Shut down the PC ….
Disconnect the USB drive and remove all CD’s DVD’s

Try turning that Hitachi 320 GB OFF in your BIOS (can turn it back on later) and reboot to …
Drive 1: WDC WD10EARS-00Y5B1. 1000 GB

While in the BIOS – What does the BIOS show for Boot Sequence? Are internal drives booting before USB/CD/DVD ?

Is the 360 GB a Seagate/Iomega USB?

Tim

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Hi Tim,

The Hitachi Drive is the primary drive of the computer.

From original post “am running XP Pro on my computer, with a 360GB hard disk ” the 360 was a typo actually a 320GB drive

I can find no method in BIOS of turning off any particular HD, you have the choice to boot from: Floppy, USB, CD/DVD or Hard disk. But no chioce as to which HD to boot from.

At present I have BIOS set to boot from CD then HD, set that way as I was running a bootloader off CD.

The 360GB is an Iomega USB External drive. ( don’t know the actual make of drive inside)

My main problem at this time is the drive letters of the 1GB ESATA drive, it will boot OK but the change of drive letters of the data partitions breaks the link between the programs and their data, if the drive letters had all changed to reflect the primary drive lettering it would be OK.

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You might be able to boot a CD which allows you to select the OS. This would require you leave the hard disks connected at all times.
Here is a list of boot loaders.

cheers, Paul

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Update! Update! Update.

I have finally got this sorted, uninstalled the bootloader – loaded a new OS image into the secondary drive – reloaded the bootloader. The dual boot now works as it should, when I boot to the secondary drive all partitions on the primary drive are hidden and the partitions on the secondary drive are now C,D,E & F and all linkages work.

Thank you everyone who provided their help, it is much appreciated.

Max

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