Booting off 2nd HD on Dell Studio 1745 Laptop
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From: Timothy Daniels on 17 Jul 2010 12:24 Thanks for the details, Brian. BING certainly has many capabilities that Windows's own boot manager doesn't have, and I wonder if Microsoft actually prefers its boot manager to be so limited. When you installed the WinXP that you boot from the external HD, did you install it there on the external HE originally, or did you install it somewhere else and then transfer its image to the external HD? If the latter is the case, one could transfer multiple images to multiple HDs and then use them with multiple PCs. :-) *TimDaniels* "Brian K" wrote: > > BING installs into an 8 MB primary partition, usually on HD0. It makes use of the Extended MBR, LBA-1 and beyond as > well as the MBR, LBA-0. It contains no drivers. It doesn't care if you have 1 or 8 HDs. BING can boot an OS on any HD. > During the boot process it "Swaps" the HD so that it appears as HD0 to the BIOS. Each OS has a Boot Item in BING where > the intended MBR on boot is recorded. So dynamically the MBR is changed for each OS booted. This enables a BING > controlled HD to have up to 200 primary partitions. But only 4 of these primary partitions are in the MBR at any one > time. The remaining partition data is stored in the Extended MBR. > > With BING you can hide OS from each other so there can be no cross talk. Unlike the Microsoft boot loader, BING > doesn't require shared booting files on HD0. The OS are independent. So you can remove an OS without affecting the > others.
From: Brian K on 17 Jul 2010 16:43 Tim, That WinXP had been installed to my HD0 a few years ago and imaged immediately after installation. It is my test image. I would never install an OS to anything other than a HD seen as HD0 at the time. After installation you can move the HD to HD1, HD2, etc position. Or you can restore the OS image to HD1, HD2, etc. You mentioned using HDs with different computers. In general that won't work as the OS has drivers for the particular hardware on which it was installed. You can make the HD boot by installing storage drivers for the new computer's controller (the OSDTOOL can do this) and then you have to manually install drivers for the different hardware. So don't get the idea that you can easily plug your eSATA HD into different computers and expect it to work.
From: Timothy Daniels on 18 Jul 2010 02:33 OK, then, it seems that Microsoft's somewhat crippled boot manager isn't to protect itself from using the same copy of a Windows OS on different PCs. Besides using BING, though, I wonder if some manufacturer's Expresscard for eSATA can be used to boot from an external SATA HD. BTW, I still haven't heard back from the rep at Silicon Image's sales office in Los Angeles regarding whether their SiI3132 chipset can be used to boot from external SATA HDs. I'd expect that they'd be crowing about it if it were possible. I'll give them a couple more days before calling them again. *TimDaniels* "Brian K" wrote: > That WinXP had been installed to my HD0 a few years ago and imaged immediately after installation. It is my test > image. > I would never install an OS to anything other than a HD seen as HD0 at the time. After installation you can move the > HD to HD1, HD2, etc position. Or you can restore the OS image to HD1, HD2, etc. > > You mentioned using HDs with different computers. In general that won't work as the OS has drivers for the particular > hardware on which it was installed. You can make the HD boot by installing storage drivers for the new computer's > controller (the OSDTOOL can do this) and then you have to manually install drivers for the different hardware. So > don't get the idea that you can easily plug your eSATA HD into different computers and expect it to work.
From: Brian K on 18 Jul 2010 03:45 Tim, Does that Expresscard have its own BIOS? My card does. I don't know whether it is essential for what I've been doing.
From: Timothy Daniels on 18 Jul 2010 12:04
Dunno. I googled the SiI chipset, and saw retailers listed for Expresscards using that chipset, but I wasn't able to find a telephone no. to call, so I tried calling the SiI office in Silicon Valley and got the usual directions to call their distributors - who don't seem to have anyone in their offices who know. Until I hear otherwise, I reason that since the capability to simply boot Windows from an external SATA HD using an Expresscard would be such a break-through for laptop owners, and since the card manufacturers aren't listing that capability, it doesn't exist, yet. *TimDaniels* "Brian K" asked: > Does that Expresscard have its own BIOS? My card does. I don't know whether it is essential for what I've been doing. |