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Hi folks!
I've Vista Business on my DSE-sources F3Ke. If I remove the HDD and
place it in an external usb enclosure, will I still be able to
optionally boot from it, assuming my bios allows it?

I'm thinking to purchase/instal another HDD for this machine & have a
play at loading XPPro on to that, if I can locate the necessary
drivers.

Cheers all.... D.

Diogenes wrote:
> Hi folks!
> I've Vista Business on my DSE-sources F3Ke. If I remove the HDD and
> place it in an external usb enclosure, will I still be able to
> optionally boot from it, assuming my bios allows it?

I *think* it's going to fail - IIRC you can only boot off a FAT32
partition.

That aside it should work - we boot off FAT32 formatted external HDDs
all the time when rescuing data off systems with broken Windows installs.

In article
<674cd368-c849-40b2-abf6->,
Diogenes did write:

> I've Vista Business on my DSE-sources F3Ke. If I remove the HDD and
> place it in an external usb enclosure, will I still be able to
> optionally boot from it, assuming my bios allows it?

I don't think Dimdows takes kindly to unexpected changes in its hardware
configuration like this.

"Lawrence D'Oliveiro" <_zealand> wrote in message
news:g6cf75$5qv$...
> In article
> <674cd368-c849-40b2-abf6->,
> Diogenes did write:
>
>> I've Vista Business on my DSE-sources F3Ke. If I remove the HDD and
>> place it in an external usb enclosure, will I still be able to
>> optionally boot from it, assuming my bios allows it?
>
> I don't think Dimdows takes kindly to unexpected changes in its hardware
> configuration like this.


I'm not sure about Vista having not tried to make unexpected changes to its
hardware, but XP was fairly forgiving. I've restored a backup of an XP
system into a virtual machine, and then later transferred it from a backup
of the VMWare machine onto a different physical machine. I didn't bother
using sysprep either, but supposedly it assists in the process.

In article <g6ch1a$fga$>, Nik Coughlin did write:

> "Lawrence D'Oliveiro" <_zealand> wrote in message
> news:g6cf75$5qv$...
>
>> In article
>> <674cd368-c849-40b2-abf6->,
>> Diogenes did write:
>>
>>> If I remove the HDD and place it in an external usb enclosure, will I
>>> still be able to optionally boot from it, assuming my bios allows it?
>>
>> I don't think Dimdows takes kindly to unexpected changes in its hardware
>> configuration like this.
>
> ... XP was fairly forgiving. I've restored a backup of an XP
> system into a virtual machine, and then later transferred it from a backup
> of the VMWare machine onto a different physical machine.

I think you're mostly OK (apart from the need to reactivate) as long as the
drive letter doesn't change. If it does, you have to reinstall.

EMB wrote:
> Diogenes wrote:
>> Hi folks!
>> I've Vista Business on my DSE-sources F3Ke. If I remove the HDD and
>> place it in an external usb enclosure, will I still be able to
>> optionally boot from it, assuming my bios allows it?
>
> I *think* it's going to fail - IIRC you can only boot off a FAT32
> partition.
>
> That aside it should work - we boot off FAT32 formatted external HDDs
> all the time when rescuing data off systems with broken Windows installs.
>
Is that in a corporate environment? We have a folder on the C: which
gets backed up when a machine is booted on the network. We guarantee
that anything in there is *likely* to be recoverable if it has been
there for a few days. Anything else is regarded as not recoverable. It
means that rescue situations are rare.

Cheers,

Cliff

--

"I LOVE IT!!" - someone on a newsgroup, somewhere.

In article <488989a4$>, EMB did write:

> ... we boot off FAT32 formatted external HDDs
> all the time when rescuing data off systems with broken Windows installs.

Thought of using a live CD or USB key? Easier to carry around.

Enkidu wrote:
> Is that in a corporate environment? We have a folder on the C: which
> gets backed up when a machine is booted on the network. We guarantee
> that anything in there is *likely* to be recoverable if it has been
> there for a few days. Anything else is regarded as not recoverable. It
> means that rescue situations are rare.

For our networked users we promise nothing for local folders, but we
redirect 'My Documents' to the server and also map a user drive onto the
server.

My original comment related to the machines we have on dialup
connections that supposedly only read email, but as is the way of lusers
often end up with irreplaceable files stored on them.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> In article <488989a4$>, EMB did write:
>
>> ... we boot off FAT32 formatted external HDDs
>> all the time when rescuing data off systems with broken Windows installs.
>
> Thought of using a live CD or USB key? Easier to carry around.

A USB key lives on my keyring and has a boot image that happily lets me
do most of what I need to. The external HDD lives bolted to the desk in
our workshop - the USB keys we used to keep there would always go missing.

In article <>, EMB did write:

> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> In article <488989a4$>, EMB did write:
>>
>>> ... we boot off FAT32 formatted external HDDs
>>> all the time when rescuing data off systems with broken Windows
>>> installs.
>>
>> Thought of using a live CD or USB key? Easier to carry around.
>
> A USB key lives on my keyring and has a boot image that happily lets me
> do most of what I need to. The external HDD lives bolted to the desk in
> our workshop - the USB keys we used to keep there would always go missing.

Is there much on the external hard drive that won't fit on the USB key? Or
are you doing more with it than just data recovery?