The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    External Enclosures

    Discussion in 'Accessories' started by EPEDEMIC, Jan 21, 2007.

  1. EPEDEMIC

    EPEDEMIC Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    70
    Messages:
    35
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    I have a question about external hardive enclosures. I have two hardrives that I yanked out of old computers. They still had WIndows on them though. My question is if they still have windows on them if I plug them into one of these external enclosures will it try to boot off of it? Thanks
     
    EPEDEMIC, Jan 21, 2007
    #1
  2. BENDER

    BENDER EX-NBR member :'(

    Reputations:
    641
    Messages:
    1,125
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    Unfortunately windows xp does not support booting from an external usb device
     
    BENDER, Jan 21, 2007
    #2
  3. EPEDEMIC

    EPEDEMIC Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    70
    Messages:
    35
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    No thats a good thing ha. I did not want it to boot. So I will be able to delete Windows from the drive in the enclosure.
     
    EPEDEMIC, Jan 21, 2007
    #3
  4. BENDER

    BENDER EX-NBR member :'(

    Reputations:
    641
    Messages:
    1,125
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    By default your bios is set to boot from either HD or cd drive. If you have set your default boot device to be usb, it will try to load windows from the external enclosure first before booting off the HD. Since windows xp does not support booting from a USB device, it will crash with a blue screen.
     
    BENDER, Jan 21, 2007
    #4
  5. vespoli

    vespoli 402 NBR Reviewer

    Reputations:
    1,134
    Messages:
    3,401
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    105
    Yes, when you get it all set up in the enclosre, it will appear as a disk drive in your "my computer". From that point you can simply right click and format the drive.
     
    vespoli, Jan 21, 2007
    #5
  6. BigV

    BigV Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    137
    Messages:
    890
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    if you're at all worried about it booting off the drive, just plug the USB device in after you're totally booted up. then just follow vespoli's advice.
     
    BigV, Jan 21, 2007
    #6