Weird boot question

OK, I know I'm asking for it, but here goes.

Since my Gigabyte board allows booting from a USB device I was wondering if
I can install an operating system to an external drive without it adding
anything to the boot sector or the boot.ini on my primary drive/s? What I
am talking about is internally, I have 2 drives, one is my primary that
boots Windows 7, the other is my storage drive where I keep all of my movie
and music files. So far nothing strange.... Ah, here comes the rub. I
was actually thinking of installing another operating system on an external
drive that I can turn on and off when I want it. So, when I want to boot to
OS #2, I turn on the external drive and boot the computer, it loads the 2nd
operating system, but, if I turn it off and boot the computer, Windows 7
boots normally by default.

No, I don't want to dual boot, and I don't want to have to choose which OS I
want to boot from. I just want to boot into the 2nd OS automatically only
when I have the external drive turned on.

Is this even possible? Can I use the OS installer to create a boot drive?
Or better yet, can I copy the OS installer onto the external drive and
install the OS that way? Or, would I have to either remove my primary drive
to perform the install or disable it in the BIOS?

The more I think about it, the more a somewhat easy operation seems more
complex.

What are your thoughts?

bettablue wrote:
OK, I know I'm asking for it, but here goes.

Since my Gigabyte board allows booting from a USB device I was wondering if
I can install an operating system to an external drive without it adding
anything to the boot sector or the boot.ini on my primary drive/s? What I
am talking about is internally, I have 2 drives, one is my primary that
boots Windows 7, the other is my storage drive where I keep all of my movie
and music files. So far nothing strange.... Ah, here comes the rub. I
was actually thinking of installing another operating system on an external
drive that I can turn on and off when I want it. So, when I want to boot to
OS #2, I turn on the external drive and boot the computer, it loads the 2nd
operating system, but, if I turn it off and boot the computer, Windows 7
boots normally by default.

No, I don't want to dual boot, and I don't want to have to choose which OS I
want to boot from. I just want to boot into the 2nd OS automatically only
when I have the external drive turned on.

Is this even possible? Can I use the OS installer to create a boot drive?
Or better yet, can I copy the OS installer onto the external drive and
install the OS that way? Or, would I have to either remove my primary drive
to perform the install or disable it in the BIOS?

The more I think about it, the more a somewhat easy operation seems more
complex.

What are your thoughts?



Do a Google for "boot bus extender". That's the thing that must be
changed, so that Windows will complete a boot from USB. The
reason Windows won't boot from USB normally, has something to do with
the USB bus being discovered, and the bus becoming disconnected
half way through the boot. The "boot bus extender" has something
to do with fixing that.

There is an example here, just to give you some idea how much work
it is. Considering the number of lines of stuff to type up, it's
hard to say how many of these recipes are correct.

http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic116114.html

Modern Windows OSes, check your hardware. The method is
outlined here. If you move the OS from one computer to another,
this is going to get in the way. If you use an older OS,
that predates these kind of checks, then you can use the
"Hardware Profile" menu, early in the boot process, to
handle the hardware differences from one machine to the
next. The Hardware Profile thing was invented for managing
"docks" for laptops, and wasn't intended as a means to share
one OS over multiple computers.

http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm

(An example of Profiles.)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308577

Paul

bettablue wrote:
OK, I know I'm asking for it, but here goes.

Since my Gigabyte board allows booting from a USB device I was wondering if
I can install an operating system to an external drive without it adding
anything to the boot sector or the boot.ini on my primary drive/s? What I
am talking about is internally, I have 2 drives, one is my primary that
boots Windows 7, the other is my storage drive where I keep all of my movie
and music files. So far nothing strange.... Ah, here comes the rub. I
was actually thinking of installing another operating system on an external
drive that I can turn on and off when I want it. So, when I want to boot to
OS #2, I turn on the external drive and boot the computer, it loads the 2nd
operating system, but, if I turn it off and boot the computer, Windows 7
boots normally by default.

No, I don't want to dual boot, and I don't want to have to choose which OS I
want to boot from. I just want to boot into the 2nd OS automatically only
when I have the external drive turned on.

Is this even possible? Can I use the OS installer to create a boot drive?
Or better yet, can I copy the OS installer onto the external drive and
install the OS that way? Or, would I have to either remove my primary drive
to perform the install or disable it in the BIOS?

The more I think about it, the more a somewhat easy operation seems more
complex.

What are your thoughts?


Use Linux???

Sure, all you need to do is put the USB first in the BIOS boot listing,
and then put some OS that supports booting from external removable
drives on the USB connected drive. Windows doesn't support that type of
of install so use something else on the external drive.

On 12/29/2010 22:54, bettablue wrote:
OK, I know I'm asking for it, but here goes.

Since my Gigabyte board allows booting from a USB device I was wondering if
I can install an operating system to an external drive without it adding
anything to the boot sector or the boot.ini on my primary drive/s? What I
am talking about is internally, I have 2 drives, one is my primary that
boots Windows 7, the other is my storage drive where I keep all of my movie
and music files. So far nothing strange.... Ah, here comes the rub. I
was actually thinking of installing another operating system on an external
drive that I can turn on and off when I want it. So, when I want to boot to
OS #2, I turn on the external drive and boot the computer, it loads the 2nd
operating system, but, if I turn it off and boot the computer, Windows 7
boots normally by default.

No, I don't want to dual boot, and I don't want to have to choose which OS I
want to boot from. I just want to boot into the 2nd OS automatically only
when I have the external drive turned on.

Is this even possible? Can I use the OS installer to create a boot drive?
Or better yet, can I copy the OS installer onto the external drive and
install the OS that way? Or, would I have to either remove my primary drive
to perform the install or disable it in the BIOS?

The more I think about it, the more a somewhat easy operation seems more
complex.

What are your thoughts?

On Wed, 29 Dec 2010 20:54:50 -0800, "bettablue"
wrote:

Ah, here comes the rub. I
was actually thinking of installing another operating system on an external
drive that I can turn on and off when I want it. So, when I want to boot to
OS #2, I turn on the external drive and boot the computer, it loads the 2nd
operating system, but, if I turn it off and boot the computer, Windows 7
boots normally by default.

No, I don't want to dual boot, and I don't want to have to choose which OS I
want to boot from. I just want to boot into the 2nd OS automatically only
when I have the external drive turned on.

Is this even possible?

Slightly OT but a dual-boot system will have a (selectable)
default boot OS. So if you turn on the pc and do nothing it will
automatically boot into your nominated default OS.

I have 3 OSs - win7, win2k and linux. If I turn on and leave it,
it will boot into win7. But at two earlier points (5 second
counters) I can select either linux or win2k. No messing with
removable media

Pete

wrote in message ...

On Wed, 29 Dec 2010 20:54:50 -0800, "bettablue"
wrote:

Ah, here comes the rub. I
was actually thinking of installing another operating system on an external
drive that I can turn on and off when I want it. So, when I want to boot
to
OS #2, I turn on the external drive and boot the computer, it loads the 2nd
operating system, but, if I turn it off and boot the computer, Windows 7
boots normally by default.

No, I don't want to dual boot, and I don't want to have to choose which OS
I
want to boot from. I just want to boot into the 2nd OS automatically only
when I have the external drive turned on.

Is this even possible?

Slightly OT but a dual-boot system will have a (selectable)
default boot OS. So if you turn on the pc and do nothing it will
automatically boot into your nominated default OS.

I have 3 OSs - win7, win2k and linux. If I turn on and leave it,
it will boot into win7. But at two earlier points (5 second
counters) I can select either linux or win2k. No messing with
removable media

Pete

So, what if I were to disable my 2 internal hard drives and install the
other OS onto the external drive? Wouldn't that put a boot sector on the
external drive so when I do turn it on, and boot the computer, everything I
need will be pretty much in place? That way, everything is kept separate
from the main computer. Or again, am I barking up the wrong tree?