Can My ThinkPad X60 Bootup from an External USB DVD-Drive ??

[mcmanaman]

I just bought my ThinkPad X60, and It has no DVD-Drive. In case my operating system need recovery, how can I use the Recovery DVD that comes with the laptop ?? Can I use an External USB DVD-Drive??
Is the BIOS capable of detecting a USB DVD-Drive and thus booting up from this device??

Please help me !! Because I don't want to buy a USB DVD-Drive, and then throw it away!!

[renhui]

Yes, of course.

[iamdmc]

Similar question:
Do you need the drive to be bootable to boot off of it if you set your bios to Boot off of USB DVD? The answer would seem obvious, but it doesn't hurt to double check.
Next, how do you know if the drive you're buying is bootable?

[pdudas]

The CD or DVD disc are bootable...
The drive just plays that discs.

Similar question:
Do you need the drive to be bootable to boot off of it if you set your bios to Boot off of USB DVD? The answer would seem obvious, but it doesn't hurt to double check.
Next, how do you know if the drive you're buying is bootable?

[mcmanaman]

Then as you are saying, if the Recovery DVD is bootable, then it doesn't matter whether it is internal (Attached to a Docking Station) or external (Via USB), in all cases BIOS must detect this drive and then run the bootable DVD.

[ryengineer]

A bootable media is made via imaging / burning tools where these softwares write special sets of codes (files) to make the media bootable specially the files BOOTCAT.BIN and BOOTCAT.BIN.

While buying a CD-RW/DVD-RW, make sure it comes with return policy, there was a thread once in this forum where a user bought an external USB optical drive from China and reported later that it was not able to boot any bootable media no matter what he/she tried.