Install XP onto a USB HDD.

[Skids]

Trying to install Windows XP onto a hard drive (not a flash drive) via USB. When I select the drive in the setup it then tells me Setup Cannot Access this Disc. Hard drive is formatted to NTFS and is empty.
Is there a way around this?

[AlBags]

This is problematical .. and tricky .. and you will need to research this on the web. It's not that easy. One problem is that XP Setup does NOT load USB2 drivers.
Check out Flashboot ... http://www.prime-expert.com/flashboot/

http://www.google.co....fe43&biw=1278&bih=826

[ChuckFickens]

Why do you want to do this?

It's possible, but a hell of a lot of work (as shown above) and additionally, running a system from a USB drive is a bad idea long term for a lot of reasons. the only reason I can see for running an OS from USB is short term for data recovery.

Long term, running your system over USB is a bad idea. For data recovery Linux works better from USB drives.

[Skids]

I need to temporarily run a 32bit Windows OS on my laptop (so that its portable) which is currently running 64bit Windows 7. I have a spare 2.5" IDE HDD which I can only plug in via USB (laptop is SATA). I also have a 32bit XP desktop with a spare 3.5" IDE HDD which would be the easy option but I still require it to plug into the laptop (additional power source required). I'm also using a re-jigged copy of bootable XP install CD that does load the USB drivers.

[AlBags]

Well .. you can certainly stream an installation copy into a USB medium .. using stuff like Nlite .. but you have the functionality of running by uSB to consider. You have system drivers to stream too.
Maybe this will do the job .. Maybe a Network drive can be built.
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Documentation

Very complicated stuff.

[ChuckFickens]

If you really need to do it you may find if easier to download this...

http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

and

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

Use unetbootin to create a bootable usb stick from the ISO on the first link, then boot from that and select mini windowsXP

It will give you a very cut down version of XP that will boot easily from a USB memory stick.

If you want some of the more advanced parts of XP then this way will be no good, but if you only need the basic XP framework this might be good enough.