Can an external (USB2) drive be used for 2nd OS (XP)?

[Gees]

I currently have 2 internal drives on an ME OS. I use C for progs and D to capture straight to mpg video using USB2 Adaptec Video DVD.

I'd like to try XP Pro without having to mess with 30+ gigs of current files on C drive.

My question: Can I install XP on an external USB2 harddrive, and capture to D drive (converted to NTFS)?

Or failing that, install XP on my current D drive and use the external to capture to? I'd worry about capturing through USB2 to another UBS2.

Thanks for any help or opinions.

Gees

[rallynavvie]

You can't boot from an external drive unless your BIOS support booting to them. You can check by going into your BIOS boot settings and seeing if it recognizes the USB2.0 hard drive in your boot settings. I'm pretty sure I can't boot from USB and FireWire peripherals on my PC but I can boot to SCSI devices.

If you have a USB2.0 external HDD just back up those files you don't want to lose to the external drive and then do a completely clean install of XP. You should really purge any existence of ME off your computer, I think there's a consensus here that ME was the worst OS M$ ever came out with.

[Gees]

Thanks for that suggestion, rallynavvie.

I just want to be able to keep what I have intact until I feel comfortable living with XP and am sure that all my fave programs, etc. work fine with it.

I know I have to make the OS change, and it's late in coming. Just have everything working so well together at the moment that I'm leary of ANY change, so want to try to make it as painless as possible.

But your idea to move everything to the external is sound, if I it turns out I can not run XP off a USB2 HD temporarily, while I'm getting used to it.


Thanks again.