Cannot boot from USB HD on T61 & T61P Why not?

[bighank]

Have bootable WD and Hitachi HDs in external USB enclosures. Have successfully cloned one of these (WD) using Acronis. When trying to boot from the USB attached drive using PF12 and selecting the recognized drive on the boot menu get either BSOD or message unable to boot operating system. What gives? Know the WD will boot internally as it was the disk that came with the system. Get the BSOD with this disk in USB port.

Hitachi give me the unable to boot operating system message when trying to boot from USB drive.

Using a TrekStor HD enclosure pn D260U20P10-3 which works fine if I boot the internal HD. Can copy and even backup internal drive to external HD but can not boot from it.

[r3solv3]

does this enclosure have an external power cord/ is it plugged in?

[JeffCullen]

hint: these problems have nothing to do with the computer itself.

[EOMtp]

No need to suffer with booting/running from external USB drive when one has the following option for < $10:
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=40Y ... m270.l1313

[RealBlackStuff]

There have been tons of postings about hthis.
If you clone, take out the original HD first and put it in a USB case or Ultrabay adapter.
Put the new HD in the internal drive bay.
You must clone from external original drive ==>> internal new drive.

[bighank]

Responding to posts:

The external drive enclosure is powered by the USB cable that also serves as a data cable. No other cables are needed or used.
The CLONED DRIVE is IN the Thinkpad and works fine. It was cloned inside the Thinkpad using Acronis. Now when you try to boot from the original drive in the external drive enclosure you get the BSOD
Operating systems are Windows Vista Ultimate in the T61 system with the WD drives and Windows 7 Ultimate in the T61P system with the Hitachi drives.
All functions work fine in the external USB drive if booting using the internal drives. Just can't boot from the external drives.

[RealBlackStuff]

If you want to boot your laptop from an external hard drive, you have to disconnect/remove the internal HD first.
Windows is the evil-doer, finding 2 HDs with the same drive-letter.

[rumbero]

Now when you try to boot from the original drive in the external drive enclosure you get the BSOD

You might want to actually analyze the information provided by the BSOD in order to understand what it is reporting. A BSOD is information, and not just a means to annoy the end user.

In any case, this is not really surprising. Since Windows now encounters a completely different boot situation, with the drive not being connected on the expected internal SATA link, it is expected to fail on boot. Windows never used to be very flexible in this regard, and i doubt this has changed for Win7. Also, if i am not completely mistaken (corrections welcome), one can't even install a Windows system on an external USB drive, so why should one expect it to be able to run from such a drive?

I guess it would be no problem if it would be, instead of Windows, any recent UNIX based MacOS or an up to date version of any Linux...

[JeffCullen]

rumbero (more or less) wins!

Just because the computer BIOS can see the USB drive, doesn't mean that when the NT kernel takes control that it will be able to -- hence the BSOD which will be 0x7B Inaccessible Boot Device

I seem to recall being morbidly curious about this several years ago and finding that some ADVANCED messing about in the registry can cause this to work--something along the lines of adding everything to do with the NT kernel talking to the USB drive to the CriticalDevicesDatabase key and setting any drivers related to this to start at level 0.

As for other OSes dealing with this, I know MacOS can handle it with Target Disk Mode though I haven't used that with anything other than FireWire, but it works great. I can imagine Linux needing a bit of messing around with the boot loader config, also needing to make sure any driver modules related to USB storage access are either compiled into the kernel or on an initrd accessible to the boot loader...

[bighank]

Recloned with Clonezilla Live Hitachi 320GB 5400 drive to Hitachi 320GB 7200 drive in external USB enclosure. If either one of these drives is placed internally in the normal SATA drive slot it functions OK as a boot drive. Used WD Acronis to clone one of the Hitachi 320 GB drives to a WD 750 Scorpio Black 7200 drive. If this drive is placed in the internal drive slot it also functions correctly as a boot drive. Can use the USB attached drive from any combo of the 3 drives but cannot boot from it.
Obtained a SATA drive housing that fits in the ultrabay space usually occupied by the RW-DVD drive. Can boot any drive from this drive bay using PF12.
When doing this can not see a USB drive on Windows Explorer (Win7) but can see it using Crystal Disk. Windows doesn't like both the USB drive and the Ultrabay drive at the same time.