I have searched high and low on how to clone an installed XP OS drive to usb. My customers wants to be able to run his computers from a USB drive when/if his hard drive fails. I need help on how to go about setting this up so that it includes all programs etc. I know about changing the bios, it's just the cloning to usb I have trouble with.
Clone/Ghost XP Hard Drive to USB
- Thread starter digisafe
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Xander
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If you could run an entire OS off of a flash drive, don't you think we'd all be doing it by now?
There's a reason we run things like UBCD which uses a WinPE environment.
There's a reason we run things like UBCD which uses a WinPE environment.
brock029
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With linux you can...More or less. Bootable ISO with a persistent file.
But to the OP, windows won't run from USB unless you, like xander said, use something like Windows pe. That's why you backup data, even make an image, and keep some spare hard drives on hand so in the event something happens you can be back up and running in a few minutes. If it's very critical.
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nlinecomputers
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You are not going to be able to RUN from an USB drive but you can clone or image a drive to an external USB hard disk as a backup. Lots of programs will do that. Windows isn't designed to be bootable from USB.
NYJimbo
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I would try to go more in the direction of a CF drive or a micro drive. That can be made bootable and there are CF adapters that you can insert the media card from the back of the tower. These are CF direct to the IDE channel, not the CF to USB you see on those multi function memory adapter things on the front of some computers.
ArtemusComputerTechnology
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Run Windows from a usb drive, what a great idea and I know some of us here have thought of. The only thing is that it is no possible right now. I run Ubuntu from a usb drive. I agree with the others, WinPE.
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