Boot from USB drive?

[Grok]

Can a PC boot from an external USB drive?  Is this a function of the motherboard BIOS?

[muert0]

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/

[MyndFyre]

At least on my laptop, I have booted from a USB floppy drive.

[iago]

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.

[MyndFyre]

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.

[iago]

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?