External Hard Drive

Generally any external drive is intended for storage not OSing. The bios on any system will look for boot devices on either the eide or SATA buses unless you have a controller card installed for ide or SATA/RAID.
 
hi guys i tryed to install xp on the hard drive but this is what i get

XP Profesional startup program cannot gain access to the disk containing the partition or free space you chose setup cannot instaall xp

whats this mean or what programs can help me
 
Why do you want it to be installed on an external drive? Do you want to use it on multiple computers?

It says that because it won't let you install it on an external drive.
 
Xp_Office said:
i just want xp on this external hard drive is their away
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You might want to try installing XP on the drive while it is internal, and see if that works. But XP is not designed to be installed like that. There is probably another way, but I don't know it.
 
OK, I know that it will not work. XP wants to communicate with the motherboard, other drives, etc. When you install it on an external drive, it can't do that. Also, Microsoft would not allow you to do that, because it would allow you to use the installation on multiple computers (illegal). So unfortunately, the answer is that you can't.
 
The only OS that might go onto any external drive would be a Linux distro. A disk image could be copied to that for use along with a boot loader. XP was specifically written for use on one system only with the hardware detection and product activation encoded on the drive it is installed onto. Once the limited number of hardware changes are reached you have to go back to MS.
 
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