Menu

Cloning to USB External Hard Drive

Help
bronofski
2009-08-02
2013-04-05
  • bronofski

    bronofski - 2009-08-02

    I'm running Win XP Pro SP3 on a 40MB hard drive and Fedora 9 on an 80GB hard drive on my desktop PC and using Acronis Disk Director 10 to boot into either OS.

    I only need Win XP Pro SP3 for occasional iTunes/NokiaPC suite useage so I plan to clone Win XP Pro SP3 to an 80MB external USB hard drive, then remove the 40MB hard drive from the PC and replace Fedora 9 on the 80GB hard drive with a new install of Fedora 11.

    As a trial I've successfully cloned Win XP Pro SP3 to the 80MB external USB hard drive using Clonezilla Live on a USB stick but the clone includes the existing MBR and I can't boot into the external 80MB USB hard drive even though the Bios is set to boot in the sequence USB/CD Rom/Hard Drive.

    I'd appreciate any advice on how to modify the MBR on the clone so I can boot directly into the external USB hard drive when it's plugged in.

     
    • Steven Shiau

      Steven Shiau - 2009-08-03

      Do you use grub as the boot loader ?
      If not, I suggest that you install grub, and write the config file to do that. It's not easy to use the MBR of Windows to do that.

      Steven.

       
    • bronofski

      bronofski - 2009-08-03

      I'm not using Grub as the bootloader and I'm not sure how to go about writing the config file. Any pointers to links explaining the process would be appreciated.

       
      • Steven Shiau

        Steven Shiau - 2009-08-03
         
        • bronofski

          bronofski - 2009-08-05

          Thanks for the leads. I've done some research and it seems unlikely that an XP installation cloned from a normal hard drive to an external USB hard drive can be made to boot independently.

          However I've been able to install Fedora 11 to my 80Gb external USB hard drive and boot it without any problems.

          Accordingly I've changed my original migration strategy. Now I intend to delete Fedora 9 from my slave 80GB internal hard drive, clone XP to the slave drive from my master 40GB internal drive which will then be disconnected from my PC leaving the current slave as the new master which should work without problems.

           

           
          • Steven Shiau

            Steven Shiau - 2009-08-07

            bronofski,
            Yes, put Fedora on your USB hard drive should work.
            GNU/Linux is much more flexible than MS windows. Therefore you'd better to keep what MS windows is... :)

            Steven.

             

Log in to post a comment.