Can I boot different operating systems from same external hard drive?

08
2014-07
  • crossboy007

    Is it possible to use one external hard drive with multiple operating systems on it so when I go onto the BIOS of my PC and can choose to boot from USB then choose which operating system rom the hard drive I want to boot from.

    I would appreciate it if you could include links to videos, posts or blogs that i have not come across that may solve my problem. Also if there is software that does this please could you link to it.

    Thanks for any help that you can give me.

    • Answers
  • sburlappp

    You can use the same techniques with USB hard drives as with USB thumb drives. Check out the YUMI tool here:

    http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

    This Hak5 video demonstrates how to use it:

    http://hak5.org/episodes/haktip-4

  • rnso

    Install 'grub' bootloader on the external hard drive (google for details). Then you can create a menu which appears at boot time and gives you options for booting from different disks/partitions.

    Alternatively, when you install a Linux distribution on a parition, it will (on most distributions) give you option for installing grub2 bootloader, which checks for all operating systems on the computer and creates a boot-time menu.


    • Related Question

    windows xp - Unable to Boot from USB External Hard Drive
  • Josh Stodola

    I recently upgraded my main development machine to Windows 7. This involved wiping out my primary boot drive (Windows XP 64-bit) and starting clean. Before I wiped it, I did a direct disk-to-disk copy to a big external hard drive I have. While I have been able to migrate most of the necessary files without any problems, I was wanting to boot from it today to check a few settings. I plugged in the hard drive, rebooted, changed the BIOS to boot from USB-HDD first. But, no mattter what I do, it always boots from my primary drive to Windows 7. I do not see any kind of error message or anything.

    How can I boot to Windows XP 64-bit on this external hard drive?


    • Related Answers
  • DCookie

    Is the external drive bootable? How did you copy the data?

    You need a boot sector on the drive, generally laid down by the installation process.

    A simple windows copy will not copy this sector. You'd need to do the equivalent of a unix "dd" command to grab the exact image of the disk.

  • JohnnyVegas

    I have booted off USB drives many times. Some disk copy software does not copy the boot sector. Use the command on the Windows 7 DVD in the BOOT menu - bootsect.exe /nt60 x: (where x: is your external drive)

  • Christopher

    I think this way may help you.

    Guide: How To Create A USB Bootable Installer Drive For Windows 8

    finally i found the answer!!

    I needed to boot from a External Hdd, because I had no CD/DVD-drive and no flash usb. This worked for me: Use MiniTool Partition Wizard, a free tool!

    - create a boot disk in partition wizard
- boot your computer with boot disk in
- copy the win8-iso-partition (do the step 5 thing as well, but as described in comments) from external hdd to the computer hard drive.
- set partition as primary and active
- reboot, and boot from local drive

    Step 5: In the Command Prompt, type-in the following commands and hit Enter key after typing each command.

    x:

cd/boot

bootsect x:

    (where “x” is your external hard drive’s drive letter)