Can a PC boot from an external USB drive? Is this a function of the motherboard BIOS?
Yes it's a function of the BIOS.
you can do it with SLAX: http://slax.linux-live.org/doc_install.php#inst2flash
Or knoppix: http://rz-obrian.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de/knoppix-usb/
And BART p.e. says it can but it's not stable: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
At least on my laptop, I have booted from a USB floppy drive.
I was able to install/boot Linux off a usb harddrive, but I was unable to install Windows to one. Maybe there's a way, but Windows XP wouldn't let me select that drive as an installation medium.
Quote from: iago on October 28, 2004, 04:15 PM
I was able to install/boot Linux off a usb harddrive, but I was unable to install Windows to one. Maybe there's a way, but Windows XP wouldn't let me select that drive as an installation medium.
Were you pressing F5/F8/Whatever-that-key-is to specify additional RAID or other mass storage devices? Windows XP wouldn't let me install to my IDE device 5, because it was on an expansion card, until I installed that driver.
I think it said "scsi or some other device" -- but no, I never tried that. But it found the drive fine, but I got "access denied" when installing to it -- is that the problem you had?