Booting from external hdd

[sithlord3k]

I need help with trying to boot from my externall hdd (I'm really tearing my hair out !)

I've got a 400GB Seagate internal hdd and have encased it in a drive caddy (to use as an external drive)

A friend of mine lent me his bet evaluation copy of Windows Vista (purely for evaluation and testing)

I'm using a laptop (Dell XPS2).
When I connect externally(via the caddy's usb cable), I get an NTLDR error message (NTLDR is missing....press Ctrl-Alt-Del to Restart ), but when I connect it straight to the motherboard, it works fine.
The XPS2 gives me the option in BIOS to boot from a USB Mass Storage device, i.e. the external hdd.
I'm about 99.9% certain that the NTLDR is there (as the drive boots independentally if connected via ide cable straight to the motherboard).

Can anyone plz help me, before I commit suicide ???

[Norky]

The NTLDR is taken from the very first drive partition, so if the Vista installation is on another partition of the harddrive, just copy the necessary files to the first partition (should only be NTLDR and boot.ini I think)

[sithlord3k]

I would've suggested the same thing had someone asked me, but there is no booting issue.
You see, I tried connecting my hdd directly to my mother board, using an ide cable, and it did boot. I also disconnected my other hdds to see if the drive would boot independently, it did.

So if it booted, being the only hdd connected to the mother board, then there cant be a booting issue. Do you agree ?

[Splash]

Do you still get the same issue if you disable any internal HDD in the BIOS?

[sithlord3k]

Yes. The only time that I dont get it, is when the hdd is connected via an ide cable directly to the motherboard, regardless to whether there is another drive connected or not.

[Splash]

Hmmmmmmmmm how bizarre - don't suppose you have a different caddy you could try it with do you? Also is it USB1.0 or USB2.0?

[sithlord3k]

usb 2.0 (both laptop and caddy)

Can you confirm that it is possible to boot from a usb mass storage device ?

[Splash]

It certainly should be possible - I have done it in the past. What motherboard/bios revision do you have?

[sithlord3k]

I'm at work so I'm not sure. What I can tell you that it's a Dell XPS2.

[Splash]

Ugh - OEM motherboard of some sort then...

[sithlord3k]

Is that bad ?

[sithlord3k]

I've had a long hard think about this and have come to the conclusion that, it's probably something to do with the mbr.

The reason being that I'm copying from an external hdd to a hdd conected via usb. Wouldn't the mbr for a hdd booting from a usb socket be different ?

Can anyone confirm this ?

[Splash]

I'm not really sure, though my suspicions are that it shouldn't make any difference. I think it's far mor likely to be shoddy support for booting USB by your motherboard/BIOS.

You could boot from your install cd with the drive connected by USB, go to recovery console and try fixmbr, but before you even think about doing that I would be sure to take good backups.