I have just purchased a 400 GB USB hard drive. I have "ghosted" my Drive E containing Vista using "Acronis True Image", and I am tring to boot from this external drive. I have reconfigured the BIOS to boot from this first, but it does not work. I get "NTLDR is missing".
Do I also need to make the USB drive the Master?? If so I cannot as there is no facility that I can see to enable me to do that.
Incidentally, I am a "sort of" beginner at this kind of thing . .
Many thanks
John
What brand is the hard drive? some external Hdds will purposely not allow you to boot from it, these are meant for back up purposes only. they do this so you can back up your entire OS and so that your computer doesn't try to boot to it every time (this is for the average computer user that thinks BIOS is something that you are diagnosed with.).
Another thing is it Firewire or USB?
If it is USB. i wouldn't suggest running an OS from it. If you boot an os from a USB device it is going to run really slow because it is having to pull an entire OS through on little piece at a time.
trust me it runs really slow.
if you want to boot multiple os's the easiest way is to make a couple partitions on your internal hard drive (use partition magic or something similar) and load each OS to It's own Partition. or turn you're new external into an internal. just take it apart and make sure your computer supports SATA hard drives. then reformat the new hard drive.
Thanks for that - it is a Fujitsu siemens storagebird USB. It only has two sockets on it-12v and a USB. No switches or anything. I have cloned my C drive on it as I said, and what I want to do is reformat the C drive and reinstall Vista on it. I have been having numerous connection problems with Vista and I have been advised by more than one guru to do a reinstall.
Will I be able to format the C and then recopy back the programs that I have saved on the USB storage? Do I reset the BIOS for the DVD drive to be the 1st Boot device?? At the moment it is the C drive??
Sorry to sound dim!!
John
Thanks for that - it is a Fujitsu siemens storagebird USB. It only has two sockets on it-12v and a USB. No switches or anything. I have cloned my C drive on it as I said, and what I want to do is reformat the C drive and reinstall Vista on it. I have been having numerous connection problems with Vista and I have been advised by more than one guru to do a reinstall.
Will I be able to format the C and then recopy back the programs that I have saved on the USB storage? Do I reset the BIOS for the DVD drive to be the 1st Boot device?? At the moment it is the C drive??
Sorry to sound dim!!
John
That is ok, that is what we are here for, to answer questions that we have prior experience with.
You will be able to recover all of the programs that are on your hard drive. If you have backed up all the info on the new hard drive you need to re-load the OS on the internal hard drive. my advice would be to reformat then install the OS. you could even download a zero out program off the internet. You know that information on a computer is just 1's and 0's well a zero out just writes 0's to the entire hard drive that way you make sure you get everything off of it before you do a re-install.
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