Can I install Windows 2000 on a USB key or Compact Flash?

How can I do?

Thx

Can you fit everything on to it, that's the first thing you should be considering. From my experience, Win2k takes up quite a lot of disk space. Though, you might be taking some of the stuff out of a standard installation (which I haven't done.)

I also would be interested in a reply to this although not for a thumb drive/compact flash but for a USB HDD. I have heard several ppl say its not possible but surely if anything has been proved to me over the last few years its that anything is possible in computing.

How is this unattended?

Topic moved.

Ive wondered about this as well when i noticed my 256meg usb thumb drive show up in the drive list during setup last week. It should be possible(for those with enough space on the drive), but you'd need a mobo that supports booting from a usb device.

Try it, see what happens. Try installing longhorn too.

-gosh

Hit F6, to load OEM-USB drivers LOL

gr /\/\o\/\/

I'm not sure you can. If your USB thingy (drive, key, whatever) is recognized by the installer, that's fine.

But as far as I know, it will still need to write a few files on a primary partition on the first bootable drive and modify its MBR. What you could try is disconnect all hard drives on your computer, just leave the USB key connected and boot from the Windows 2000 CD. Maybe that'll do the trick.

You'll still have to be able to boot from a USB drive, something very few motherboards on the market are able to do.

WindowsPE would probably work. I'd think with Windows 2000 you would have a problem with the SCSI ID section section in the boot.ini - you know, the part that says multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT this information would change with different systems.

You would probably get Invalid boot device errors.

Hello All,

I have a external usb hard drive, and my pc's bios has a option boot from USB?

Question is, that if i install any OS on my external HDD will it be separate frm the one inside connected ?

Thanks

Mutahir

What about on CF cards ? ?

@Strange_Chars

I think there are 2 main issues (as mentioned in this Thread before)

1) Does Setup see the disk (can you select it in the setupscreen)

2) Does the GUI-part start (or do you get "inaccessable Boot-device")

so if 1) is Yes,

just select it and see if setup will continue;)

gr /\/\o\/\/

You can install an Os to a usb device.

But there are some things to consider as mentioned above.

Your BIOS must support USB Bootable devices,

Your OS Must also support USB

Your USB device must have ample room for the OS, Drivers, Temp files and of coarse a Swap file..

But! the OS would only work on 1 pc... the one it was built on.

I can't see why u would want to build an OS on a portable device? The only use I can see is to make the USB device bootable, and then have all the OS files and drivers for unattended install on to the internel hdd - If the CDRom is faulty or missing... Then it should work... I am currently working on this and will post a note if it is possible.

I will do it for W2k OS and let you now....

Does not necessarily need portablility. But less power and less heat is nice. I'm looking into the same kind of thing, just need 3 apps to run, Virusscan, Ghost, and Datarecovery software. But I want the system to be highly portable, box less than 200 cubic inches. The idea to have a portable computer more powerfull than a laptop, and use the customers KVM while working on their drive out of their sysem, using firewire.

Hello all,

actually i was just thinking that i haev xp installed on the internal hdd and was thinking to either install win2003 or may be solaris/unix just to work and learn that OS without spoiling my xp install and softwares and be able to attach and detach whenever i want frm this pc, won't use with anyother....

but they are really good

thanks for ur time

mutahir