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Help booting from Vantec NexStar CX HDD Enclosure

<<Onafets>>

<<Onafets>>

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Today I bought a Vantec NexStar CX HDD Enclosure and it has Windows 7 on it. My dad's mobo won't allow be to boot to a USB HDD or any USB device. Is there any way to force a USB boot? I want to be able to set priorities like in the bios. Stoopid pentium 4 board...:slap:
 
T

twilyth

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if the mobo doesn't support it, then that's it. You can always check the web site of the motherboard maker and see what the last bios version was and if there were any changes since your version that might add that functionality but for a P4 board, I don't know. I can't remember when that feature became common.

Of course you can always crack open the case and pop the drive into the computer. This should be straight forward, but I have seen one case where the 'cable select' feature is set on the drive jumpers. In that case, you'll need to post again and keep bumping your thread until someone who knows about this stuff sees it and can advise you.

IIRC, in that case I just moved the jumper to master or slave position.

All this assumes it is an IDE drive. If its SATA, then the transplant should be simple. Remove from A, insert into B, connect cables.

edit: Ignore the SATA part, I'm tired. Obviously a P4 won't have SATA connectors. But you can get SATA-IDE adapters. They're not that expensive. Less than $50 IIRC
 
slyfox2151

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its not uncommon for a later p4 board to have 1 or 2 sata ports,

my bros 478?(not sure of exact pin count but its somewhere around there) skt board has 2 sata ports, was made in 2002 ish i think.
 
Mussels

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boot from USB wont work with windows 7 for sure.

I'm unsure on vista, but i know XP can do it.


The OS's were not designed for that.
 
T

twilyth

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Mussels said:
boot from USB wont work with windows 7 for sure.

I'm unsure on vista, but i know XP can do it.


The OS's were not designed for that.
Click to expand...

If the bios is the layer between the hardware and the o/s, then if the bios sees it, why would the o/s care? It would have to go out of its way to detect that the drive was not onboard and THEN reject it. IDK. Could you go into a little more detail about why specifically W7 won't boot from an external USB drive?
 
Mussels

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twilyth said:
If the bios is the layer between the hardware and the o/s, then if the bios sees it, why would the o/s care? It would have to go out of its way to detect that the drive was not onboard and THEN reject it. IDK. Could you go into a little more detail about why specifically W7 won't boot from an external USB drive?
Click to expand...

because the OS needs to support loading from those drivers. considering the HDD activity vista had, booting from USB there would totally kill performance of the OS.

as for windows 7, MS deliberately had boot from USB removed - microsoft removed support from it officially. I dont know why, but i've seen people talking about it.
 
T

twilyth

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Mussels said:
because the OS needs to support loading from those drivers. considering the HDD activity vista had, booting from USB there would totally kill performance of the OS.

as for windows 7, MS deliberately had boot from USB removed - microsoft removed support from it officially. I dont know why, but i've seen people talking about it.
Click to expand...

OK, that I can believe. Fuckin' M$!!! :banghead:

So they really are going out of their way to recognize the type of boot drive and then cock block the USB drives.

Just as I was to type how I feel about that, it occurred to me that the greedy bastard might have a good reason. Well, not "good" in the normal sense, but in the M$ sense of defending their fiefdom. If you've got the OS on and external drive, then maybe you can get away with buying only one copy of the OS. Yes, the drivers would be different, but some enterprising geek will probably find a way around that. And if not, just set it up as dual boot and hide the first partition when you install on the second.

Thanks.
 
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