Installing to and Booting from an Esata drive

[dwinsor]

Hi there. I am new to all this and i am looking to install XP or Vista to my external Esata drive. I have an acer laptop with a Express card for my Esata to plug in to. does anyone know if there is a way to install and boot an os from this drive.

Thanks

[jaclaz]

This is an entirely new "realm".

Provided that the laptop BIOS allows booting from e-sata, the Dietmar's "XP on USB" procedure should work, with the needed changes:

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=14181

If the e-sata bus is not bootable to BIOS, it should be possible to adapt the "XP Kansas City Shuffle" to it:

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...c=21242&hl=

AFAIK there is not (yet ) a specific e-sata method/tutorial.

jaclaz

Edited May 30, 2008 by jaclaz

[Zxian]

Which model Acer Laptop do you have?

Provided that the laptop BIOS allows booting from e-sata, the Dietmar's "XP on USB" procedure should work, with the needed changes:

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=14181

@jaclaz - If the BIOS allows booting from eSATA - why would he need to alter the standard XP installation? AFAIK, people have been able to boot XP from eSATA devices without any trouble before.

[jaclaz]

@zxian

As I see it (but I might be completely and utterly wrong, of course ) the problem might be the "Express Card" thingie.

What I am just speculating about and probably failed to express properly, is that the BIOS must be able to boot from the PCMCIA slot and accept an e-sata attached to it.

And, once the "real mode" part has booted, there should be the need for an Express Card (read PCMCIA) driver and that for a sata driver, so we are in a situation similar to the "Boot from USB" where more than one driver is needed.

A "direct" e-sata bus would not be a problem, I think, as e-sata is basically nothing but a connector for the normal sata bus to attach external devices, and as thus is supported by the "normal" appropriate sata driver.

jaclaz

[dwinsor]

Hi there thanks for all the comments will look through and see what i can do. Will report back if i get it working