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Sat 24 Jan, 2004 12:01 pm
If I wanted to install a second OS - this is basically a theoretical question, because XP Home is nice and stable - could it be done on my external HD? If so, could I transfer information from one OS to the other?
Presently my external HD is strictly for backup and security purposes, and has material on it that isn't on my CPU. Would I lose that? would it transfer to the new OS?
Theoretical...academic...low curiosity (probably demonstrating a high degree of confusion about comuters, but I don't care).
Sure you can install an OS on an external hard disk drive, and yeah you should be able to transfer data across your OSes just fine.
What are you using to connect the HDD to the computer though? That's important. If, for example, you're connecting through USB, you'll need a boot manager that loads a USB driver (unless your BIOS already supports USB).
One thing to keep in mind though is that even though your OS is on an external HDD it's set up specifically for your machine's hardware so if you connect the external HDD to another computer you may not be able to boot off it.
Second OS
How do I find out whether my BIOS supports USB? The external HD (Maxtor) uses a USB connection.
Of course, this is all just some theoretical possibility to keep in mind for a time when I have nothing better to spend my time and money on . . .
Tomkitten wrote:How do I find out whether my BIOS supports USB?
Check your motherboard manual, or boot to a floppy while your external harddrive is connected & see if you can see its files in DOS.
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