# Using External HDD to boot Dell Latitude D610



## atrivedi (Feb 8, 2010)

I am trying to set up my Dell Latitude D610 laptop to boot from an external hard drive. The reason I am doing this is because the Internal HDD on the laptop is physically damaged and I cannot access it. I was contemplating simply buying a new hard drive and installing it in the laptop, but thought of trying to get the laptop to work by installing the operating system in an external hard drive. Here is what I have done so far:

1. I created two Primary partitions in my external Hard Drive, G: and H: Only H: is set to Active. G: contains my backup data.
2. Then I boot my laptop from the WinXP CD and select H: from external Hard Drive to install the operating system. (My external HDD is recognized as a bootable device. It appears in the list of devices in the BIOS in the boot sequence.)

However, it seems like the system does not seem to recognize the fact that I am trying to install WinXP in H:. Upon selecting H: and hitting Enter, I get the following error message:


"An error occurred while Setup was updating partition information on:

57232 MB Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0 on atapi [MBR]

Setup cannot continue. To quit setup, press F3."

This message arises because the system tries to intall WinXP in the damaged Internal Hard Drive (C.

How do I get the system to ignore the damaged C: and continue with the selected H: ? 

I could try
1. Renaming H: to C: in my external HDD, that is if C: has special meaning in the Windows Operating system world. But then there will be two C:, one in the external HDD and one in the Internal damaged HDD. Will that be a problem?

There is another cause of concern to renaming H: to C:. I often connect my external HDD to another laptop, which has its OS installed in it's internal HDD's C:. Will that laptop get confused if it see two C: too?

2. Physically remove the internal HDD?

Please let me have your suggestions.


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## Madcatz (Apr 15, 2008)

Well, first thing is when you are installing XP onto an external hard drive, you are going to have to do alot of "fixes" if you actually want it to boot from the external. Problem is that the BIOS has it's own USB drivers that it uses to boot from USB devices. But Windows has it's own USB drivers, and it loads the drivers when Windows starts loading and doing so it resets the USB ports, and when that happens, no more external hard drive and Windows now has nothing to continue booting from.

I had found instructions on how to get it to work once, it was about 7 or 10 pages long, and even if it finally does work, not everything will work hardware wise.

Best bet (and easiest) is just to replace the internal drive.


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## atrivedi (Feb 8, 2010)

Hello Madkatz

Thank you for your response. I appreciate it. I think I will go with your advice and simply replace the internal HDD. It will not be worth my time to try and boot from the external drive.

Thanks again.


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