Could somebody please tell me if not just OK but also possible to install XP to an external USB hard drive?
I don't know about possible but its an extremely bad idea. not only are USB drives slower than internal ones, they're also much less reliable (i.e the connection can be lost at any time)
I'm not talking about leaving my Window there forever. I'm trying to switch my drives around. My internal drive is labeled D. I'm wanting to switch places with C and D so I can have my XP on my internal drive. The other thing is my external drive has got two other partitions on with a whole bunch of stuff I don't want to lose. I'm also having a hard time figuring out what to do with that stuff so I've got some room for switching.
you can't just change drive letters like that. if its the drive the OS is installed on then the only realistic way of changing drive letters is a reinstall, and perhaps a repartition (windows has to be installed on the first readable partition of the hard disk in question) and its a good idea to disconnect all other hard disks during the install as windows can do stupid things with them some times. It's very unusual for windows to be installed on any partition other than C, but I have seen it happen.
I just tried what you said and found something weird. According to my disc managment my C drive is on my internal drive. I ran managment after I unplugged my external drive so I'd only see my internal. But when I ran my set up disc the only drive it saw was my D drive. Now if my C partition is on my internal drive, and my external drive was unplugged when I ran my set up disc, then how come my set up disc didn't see my C drive too?
I did it! ;v) I ran my Xp disc and trashed EVERY partition on my internal drive! ;v) Then I just install XP like usual! ;v) Thanx, Loony! ;v) *kisses his cheek
Say (sorry if i hijcack this) but if i had three or four inter hard drives can i install in one XP and have a way to chose on which hard drive i can boot onto?
Oh then this info is going to migthy useful on my gaming desktop then (four har drive one for win 7 and one for win XP, given that some games seem to have less compatibility issues on XP than windows 7)
I've never dual booted xp and 7, but I think you have to install xp first. Also don't ever defrag or scandisk one OS disk from the other OS, that will bugger it up.
i got a post it with those two pieces of advice slapped rigth above my monitor, and yea you need to install XP, there is a bug that locks you out off windows 7 and you need to run a maintenance tool from the CD/DVD of win 7 to fix it or something like that
I can't see why you would want to do that because hard disk drives are known for heating up most of the time. Even having two separate internal hard drives produce a ton of heat compared to having just one. I would recommend just partitioning a 1TB hard drive (or however much storage you have) and use the separate partitions for multiple OS's.
multiple drives is faster than a single drive. plus theres the security of if one drive fails, the data on the others is safe. standard 7200rpm disks don't produce that much heat anyway. In terms of multiple OSes, if one disk dies, then the OS(es) on the other disk(s) are still bootable and usable. I would never recommend multiple partitions except in specific situations. Partitions are slower and consume space.
With the courtesy of Linux it at least has a Master boot record for multiple OSes. And I haven't had any trouble with using more than one partition.
yeah and if the single disk dies then you're stuffed no matter how many MBRs or OSes are on it. With multiple disks then the loss is limited to the contents of that one disk, other disks are unaffected. the partition table and filesystem overheads take up space, which is multiplied by the number of filesystems. I use partitions too, but only for very specific scenarios. primarily to keep my documents separate from the OS, while still being on my raid array.
Aside what loony said, i would like to keep two disks for Os's one for modern games, one for less modern games, since i know that XP runs most of the stuff like old games, of 2000 to 2008 i think or earlier even, also as loony pointed for having backups of files rather than the drive failing, in my case it's more along the lines of me having the magical gift to crash windows or mac or linux within minutes of me doing nothing, and i am getting of track, the other two drivers are meant for either extra failsafe or for speeding sligthly the whole system.
