Booting Vista from External HD via USB

B

Blek

New Member
I'm trying to have an additional drive with vista installed for back-up, recovery, problem solving etc... for my laptop. So I tried to be smart, and installed Vista on a SATA hard drive that was connected to the SATA cable of a PC. The HD was then put in an enclosure connected via USB to the laptop. However, when trying a reboot on the USB drive, it got started (which means it recognized the System on the external HD), then the loading stops with a blue screen and the machine get restarted. I believe there should be an incompatibility in the way vista was installed (as a main HD "C:") and the way it tries to load (as an external HD "F:"). I have no clue how to repair the installation on the external HD, I tried the "Repair" function from the vista DVD but it didn't help, same problem after repair. May be things have to be repaired manually?

any help will be appreciated.
 

My Computer

System One

I don't believe you can boot Windows o/s via usb.

You would need to attach the drive to the laptop via sata cable, install it from the laptop itself - then to boot it , it would also need to be sata connected.

If you want to use an external usb HD for recovery purposes - the best way is to store disk image backups on it.

The free version of this is excellent:

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp

Hope it helps
 

My Computers

System One System Two

  • Operating System
    Vista
    CPU
    Intel E8400
    Motherboard
    ASRock1333-GLAN R2.0
    Memory
    4gb DDR2 800
    Graphics card(s)
    nvidia 9500GT 1gb
  • Operating System
    win7/vista
    CPU
    intel i5-8400
    Motherboard
    gigabyte b365m ds3h
    Memory
    ballistix 2x8gb 3200
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