Hi there,
Since at least 2008, I have had an Elements WD2500C035 external drive which has been used solely to back up data. Recently though, on the advice of a guy in a computer forum who has very kindly been helping me, I have been attempting to clone my Windows XP OS to the external drive. I have made several attempts at doing this (after putting the external drive first in the boot sequence), but each time the external drive has failed to boot into Windows. When I try to start up, I get a very brief sight of a blue screen with a few lines of white writing on (this disappears too quickly to read, but I believe it includes some kind of long number… possibly a file name or something). Once this has gone, I get the black screen with white writing saying that Windows could not be started. When the external drive is tuned off, the computer boots up normally… and I have also cloned to a second hard drive (my computer has has 2 internal drives) and that clone boots perfectly so there is nothing wrong with my cloning method; it seems to be the external drive alone that will not boot.
What I would like to find out from you - if possible - is whether it should be possible to boot into Windows from this particular external drive. I have read conflicting things on the internet about booting from an external drive and was wondering whether perhaps the fact that this drive is quite old might mean that it would not be possible to boot from it.
Thanks in advance for any information you can give.
Chris.
Luckily, we still managed to find an alternative solution to what we were trying to achieve.