Make own bootable OS

[mknabster]

Hey guys, I have an external hard drive that I have plenty of space in, and I am going to make a partition on it, with XP, which would allow me to plug the hard drive into anyone's computer, and I can boot directly from that and do what I need to do to their computer. I know that the speed of the operating system is at the mercy of the USB port, but i'm sure that would be faster than a bootable disc. So here's my question, how does their computer's BIOS have to be configured to allow me to boot from the external hard drive?

[EzyStvy]

Are you familar with the term DRIVERS? If you install XP on the external - it'lll have the drivers for your machine and not theirs.

But to answer your question - the other pc must have the option in the BIOS to boot off an external drive.

[strollin]

You should look into UBCD and UBCD4Win. Both are CDs that you can use to boot a computer from and contain many tools and utilities to use to troubleshoot and repair problems. UBCD is Linux based and doesn't require anything else. UBCD4Win requires you to supply an XP disk and build the bootable CD.

[mknabster]

Yea, I didn't think about the drivers, I'll into that UBCD for Windows. Thanks

[Nikon]

in my personal experience, i feel the best option for an OS you can freely boot on any computer w/o worrying about drivers/etc would be a flavor of linux 'live'

linux mint lets you do this, and it is very simple to use. boot the OS right off of the cd and it is fully functional and lets you access every part of the computer w/o involving anything off of the HDD.

[AnotherMuggle]

Originally Posted by Nikon in my personal experience, i feel the best option for an OS you can freely boot on any computer w/o worrying about drivers/etc would be a flavor of linux 'live' linux mint lets you do this, and it is very simple to use. boot the OS right off of the cd and it is fully functional and lets you access every part of the computer w/o involving anything off of the HDD.

I agree!

In my opinion Linux Mint makes a better live CD than Ubuntu, due to the fact that it includes many of the restricted extras that need to be installed on top of a default Ubuntu install. It also has a more familiar interface for people who are normally Windows users.

Going one step further PenDriveLinux allows most derivatives of Linux to be installed to a USB drive, even with the option of persistence.