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General discussion

installing win xp on an external hard disk

by thosecars82 Jan 25, 2010 1:36AM PST

Hello there
I have this problem. I have win vista installed at the computer's internal hard drive. I would like to install win xp on an external hard disk without modifying anything at all at the internal hard disk where Win Vista is installed. What is more, I do not want to mess up with the internal hard disk's boot sector. Is there a straight forward approach to get this done?
I thought I could install win xp in the external hard disk by simply loading the win xp's installation cd in the cd tray and booting from the cd. Then I would choose the external hard disk as the target unit to install Win XP. Nonetheless, I think this approach has the inconvenience that would modify the boot sector in the internal hard disk. Since I do not want to mess up with this boot sector, is there anyway, to avoid modifying it so that the changes do not affect my current configuration but just my external hard disk?
Thanks in advance

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Google that.

by r. proffitt Forum moderator Jan 25, 2010 2:43AM PST

You can find where some have cracked this on USB drives. But it runs so slowly that whatever your misgivings on Vista will pale for your contempt for XP on USB.

The modifications are extensive so be prepared.

The other way is on some eSATA drive. While that's faster, the install has confounded many!
Bob

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