External USB boot on E-series

I've been setting up external bootable USB drives for our D-Series laptops for the past two years (using the modified XP CD method - http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176) and there's been no hitches. Our new shipment of E6400's however is giving me grief and the XP CD will BSOD during the CD boot (even without any USB drive attached). Has anyone managed to get a external USB boot drive working on a E-series? I have already turned off IRRT and no change.

Failing that, I've been reading about the E-Module bay that will accept a 1.8" drive. Anyone used it to boot from yet? If so, can you list the part numbers for the module and hard drive, I've been unable to find anything off the Dell website, only that it exists in their marketing.

I'd ideally like to use the eSata port but since it's not self-powered, its not an option as that reason we use the external USB drives as they are self-powered. There is also a external media bay module (430-3116) that has very little information, anyone have this device and can tell me if it hooks up through the eSata port and how it is powered?

Thanks.

 

You turned off IRRT but are you still using AHCI, which needs the appropriate drivers.

If you don't need the benefits of Intel Matrix Storage (for example eSATA) then try the ATA mode. Otherwise you meed to figure out how to load the AHCI drivers.

John

 

Set it to ATA, install XP and then install the drivers manually through the iastor.sys file that can be found under Matrix Storage Manager on the driver download page....after loading the drivers, restart, set SATA operation back to AHCI in your BIOS and you're done.