# How to boot from external drive?



## Gamepsyched

I just got a lacie external dvd drive because my internal drive on my dell xps m1710 failed.

My computer has vista on it and i want to install xp on it. I have the disk in my external drive but i say boot from dvd drive and it seems not to find that one.

It is connected via. firewire cable 

I really need help as you probably know how annoying vista is and i would love to get back to xp  

Thanks in advance for the help


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## Gamepsyched

bump


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## brycematheson712

Alright, none of this is ACTUAL knowledge or anything. I'm just throwing this out there to try and be useful. Maybe it will help somehow.

I think the BIOS have to support USB Drives in order to be able to boot from them. I'm not sure how old your system is. Even some of the newer BIOSs don't have external drive support.

Is Firewire even supported as a boot device? Firewire, in my opinion, isn't very popular (compared to USB at least) and I've never seen a Firewire bootable device before. I think USB may be your best bet.

Again, these are just off the top of my head, not actual knowledge, so wait until someone else posts to get some true answers.


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## tremmor

this discussion just came up about 5 days ago. and many other times. i don't know about firewire. you only need the drivers for usb to make it work on the boot disc. in fact been talked about how. and free boot software with usb support. i'll take a look later.


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## fmw

Bryce is on to it.  You have 4 choices for booting - network, hard drive, floppy drive or optical drive.  The drives can't be external simply because the interface that connects them to the computer can't become functional until after the computer is booted.  The BIOS doesn't know anything about them.  They come into play through the operating system.  If you can load drivers into memory that activate a USB port, then that might work if you have a way to telling BIOS where to start.

The simplest solution would be to buy or borrow an internal optical drive and move on.  Optical drives aren't expensive.


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## Gamepsyched

fmw said:


> Bryce is on to it.  You have 4 choices for booting - network, hard drive, floppy drive or optical drive.  The drives can't be external simply because the interface that connects them to the computer can't become functional until after the computer is booted.  The BIOS doesn't know anything about them.  They come into play through the operating system.  If you can load drivers into memory that activate a USB port, then that might work if you have a way to telling BIOS where to start.
> 
> The simplest solution would be to buy or borrow an internal optical drive and move on.  Optical drives aren't expensive.



Well i just wasted my money on this external drive then. Because the one in my laptop i could not find anywhere so is there an update so i can get it to boot from external. Like a bios upgrade


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## Gamepsyched

any solution?


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## dznutz

connect the drive via usb,  go into bios and choose boot using usb


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## Gamepsyched

dznutz said:


> connect the drive via usb,  go into bios and choose boot using usb



is there a firewire to usb cable??


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## fmw

More importantly is there a "boot from USB" in the BIOS?  I've never seen such a thing although it might exist on some mainboard somewhere.  No, firewire and USB aren't interchangeable.  USB is interrupt driven and firewire is not.  You can't use an adapter cable.  Go buy or borrow an internal optical drive.


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## Cleric7x9

as others have said, you will need to use a USB connection. typically, this works fine


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## Gamepsyched

uhh this is so inconvinient... i guess vista will have to be my friend even though its messing up my computer


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## wardhanster

try booting from lan 
check ur bios for options


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## N3crosis

Gamepsyched said:


> uhh this is so inconvinient... i guess vista will have to be my friend even though its messing up my computer



You could always return the drive, then check if they have any USB ones. If they won't take it back tell them that it doesn't work with your laptop. Even if they give you store credit (hopefully it was a computer store) you could just buy a USB one.


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## phulpotofaqeer

nice information


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## The Best Jack

I didn't have a boot via USB on my BIOS when I wanted to boot from my external hardrive although it was detected as a normal hardrive and had to select the USB hardrive over the SATA within the BIOS.

Jack.


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