Recently, the hard drive on my Dell Inspiron 1100 went out. The hard drive in itself was a 30 GB 4200 rbm, interface: ide, ATA. but what i am really looking into is running windows Xp off of my usb external hard drive. i have already tried, and the computer tells me that it cannot be done. I've read that i need to format it into FAT format, so i'll try that, and some other things. but if anyone knows how to do it, please let me know, it'd be really helpful.
don't bother doing that as no advantages to booting off external. also external is slower than internal so get an internal hd. does the bios support usb boot drives?
what size was it & who says it has to come from dell? i got a compaq laptop from a customer who didn't need it anymore because the 20gig hd died. cost me about $60Can for a new 40gig wd 2.5" drive. installed it myself & loaded xp pro on it.
all the information about the hard drive is in my original post. i recently found a hard drive replacement that is only $77, and it's an 80gb, so i think i'll go with that, unless someone can find me something better.
alright, i have another question dealing with an OS. i have an external seagate hardrive 3.5 inch. and the website tells me that my Windows ME os should automatically detect that hard drive and install the necessary drivers, and it is not. so i dug a little deeper in the website, and it says i need the file USBNTMAP.SYS found on the installation disk in folder WIN9XBASE2.CAB . in found that file, what do i do with it.
im using windows ME just because i don't feel like upgrading that computer at all, it's not worth my time.
