Installing XP on External Hard Drive

[bigbanana]

I've only ever had one OS on my PC, but now a friend has asked me to do something on his PC and I'm confused where to start.

Basically, he has a PC running XP as the OS. The installation itself is OK but there's a lot of junk on it and he'd like to format the drive.

He has an external hard drive attached to the PC via USB and he'd like to install XP onto that drive He then wants to format the PC HDD and put W98 onto that.

The problem we've got is that the once the XP disc is inserted in the PC drive, it seems to want to do things to the PC installation of XP.

What we want is a method of telling the PC to install the XP to the external HDD leaving the PC version alone.
I thought that entering the drive letter of the external HDD and putting X:/Setup in the Run box might work, but it doesn't.

It's been such a long time since I installed XP in my own PC, I can't remember if an option like this is given during the setup installation - without knowing for certain, I don't want to risk it. To make matters worse, the setup screens I've seen on the web do show that XP asks about partitions during installation. Now I've always thought that partitions were on the same drive, but could the disc include referring to another HDD in this way?

Many thanks for all the help you can give.

[vehelpfulguy]

I cant understand why he wants to install XP on the external hard drive.

Why does he want to do that?

[markysngc]

First thing to make sure is does the computer support booting from a USB device in the BIOS, if it doesn't it isn't going to work no matter what you do, although you may still be able to flash your BIOS to a newer version. However Flash your computers BIOS with EXTREME CAUTION... if it goes wrong, or if you try flashing with an incompatible BIOS you will likely end up with a very dead computer.

Even if your computer does support booting from USB then the official MS line is you can not run XP from a USB drive, this is due to the windows instal bootup sequence not loading the USB mass storage drivers early enough. however there are instructions at link below on how to work round this, this is not for the faint hearted/non techie types, and probably also goes against loads of the windows license conditions as it requires burning a modified XP install CD.

http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=417

[markysngc]

and also agree with vehelpfulguy..... curious as to why would anyone want this setup.

[bigbanana]

Thanks guys. I had a feeling this would not be easy.

The reason behind all this is that he has a number of peripherals such as scanners etc that only run off W98. The device manufacturers never produced drivers for them in XP. Instead of chucking this old hardware out, he wants the benefit of being able to use it in W98 and get his XP compliant hardware to run from that.

There are also features of W98 that he prefers over XP and in a nutshell, he wants the best of both worlds.

[markysngc]

there is no reason why he can not dual boot windows 98 and XP from one internal hard drive, assuming it has enough space, much easier to do, only real thing to take into consideration then is the drive needs to be fat32 formatted otherwise 98 will not be able to read it.

The windows setup will deal with all on it's own, though I believe (somebody please correct me if I'm wrong) that the 98 install will have to be done first and then install xp as a separate install specifying not to format or partition the drive. Pretty sure it won't work other way round.

Mark

[Mac70]

Yes, you would have to install 98 first, creating a partition at the start. Then install XP into the left-over space.
If you wish 98 to see XP you will have to format the XP partition with FAT32.

Are you sure there are no updated drivers for those devices?

[bigbanana]

Thanks markysngc.

The PC is one of the earlier HP Pavilion series and the HDD is about 4.3 Gig if I remember rightly. He bought the 30 Gig external drive to increase his storage, but I think that partitioning a 4.3 Gig drive for two OS's would be pushing it.

[rojash]

markysngc is right. If he installs XP onto his main drive AFTER Win98, the system will automatically be configured for dual boot.

[bigbanana]

Thanks Mac70. We've tried everywhere for the drivers but drawn a blank to date. His scanner for example was pretty expensive and had the facility to scan negatives etc to a very high resolution. He's very reluctant to buy another because he knows it would work if only he could install W98 on the external.

[bigbanana]

Thanks rojash. Is the size of the drive really a problem?

[Mac70]

Then a dual-boot is the answer. If both partitions are FAT32 he can access documents etc from whichever OS he is using at the time.

[bigbanana]

rojash, can you also give me a link or provide some details of how we'd go about installing XP on the drive after the W98 installation?

Thanks

[bigbanana]

Thanks Mac70. Is the internal HDD big enough to run a dual boot?

Thanks again.

[Mac70]

I missed that. That is a mighty small hard drive. Once XP is installed and fully updated, I doubt there would be much space left for anything.
Im know very little about 98, that's before my time so Ill leave it to one of the others to assist you.
I do have XP Pro on a partition, not updated, and just a copule of small programs installed and that's at 2.6gb

[markysngc]

the drive doesn't need to be made into 2 partitions, one fat32 partition will suffice and both OS's can be installed onto the same partition but you would need to specify during the XP installation to install to a directory called something other than windows so it doesn't over wright the 98 install, however 4.3gb is going to be a little on the small size to install 2 OS's on

if it is a 3.5inch external HDD you Could try taking the 30gb drive out of it's external enclosure and putting it in the computer as an internal drive, the motherboard on a computer that old probably will not support a drive much bigger than 30gb anyhow so not worth buying a larger drive.

to install XP after the 98 install just put the XP disk in and install as normal being very careful to read all option screens to make sure you don't reformat the drive.

[markysngc]

oh and of course there is also the win98 fat32 file system limit of 32gb as well

[bigbanana]

Thanks Mac70

Markysngc, can you explain a bit more about specifying to install to another directory other than windows? I take it this option would appear during the XP setup. I assume that directory in this sense means partition?

Thanks

[markysngc]

No, nothing to do with partitions, as default windows will install to c:\windows but if you are installing a second copy of windows onto a partition which already has another windows install on it it will give you the option to install to a different path (i.e. c:\winxp)

just starting a XP install on my windows machine to get these steps right as despite, or maybe because of, having done hundreds of installs I don't really read the options :)

start XP install by booting from cd
when install starts you will have you option to setup XP or repair, hit enter for setup
agree to license (F8)
on next screen hit esc to install fresh copy of XP
select the partition that windows98 is on (you'll probably only have one)
hit c to continue setup (may warn you to check a page at ms website)
*select leave the current file system intact" (very important)
on the next page it whould say that there is an exsisting windows install in c\windows and one of the options is ESC to use different folder
change the path from \windows to somthing like \winxp

From this point the install should go on as normal and when it has finished and you reboot you will be greeted with a menu asking what OS you want to boot into.

though if you are doing it on a fresh blank drive and you do the XP install straight after the 98 install the worst that is going to happen if you get it wrong is you will have to start again with the 98 install.

Mark

[bigbanana]

Mark, you're brilliant. Thank you very much.

[ACtheTROLL]

marky
the windows 98 fat 32 limit is 2Tib
in 2000/xp however ... for some wierd reason the limit is indeed a setup size of 32gb (but it can read any size)
(this is one of the reasons I still have a w98 machine (or bootdisc) ... for formatting usb drives -

it's the only reason I'm mentioning it

see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_T able


the early hps could well be restricted to 7.8gb ... but that can be cured with a bios update

sorry to be picky .. the rest is fine