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BootIt BM and External USB Hard Drives

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 9:16 pm
by tscv11
i have a simple goal but i don't know if it's attainable. i have a laptop and two 1T USB external hard drives. i have backed up my internal drive to one of the external drives and then restored that image to the second external drive. now i want to boot from that drive to test the restore. so far i can't get my laptop to boot from the external drive. i've made sure that the system partition of the restored drive is "Active" and so on. when rebooting i make sure that the BIOS boot order is set for booting from USB. still, the external drive is just ignored and the computer boots from the internal drive as usual. if anyone can tell me how to make this work (using BootIt BM?) i would be very grateful.

thanks for your time

Re: BootIt BM and External USB Hard Drives

Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 12:44 am
by Brian K

Re: BootIt BM and External USB Hard Drives

Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 2:13 am
by tscv11
thanks for the tip. i just got BootIt BM - does it come with a "fully liscensed" copy of tbosdt? i saw a file called "TBOSDT.EXE" in the BootIt folder, but when i tried to run it i got an error message starting with "the version of the file is not compatible with your version of windows." i got the same error when attempting to run the file called "IMAGE.EXE"

suggestions?

thank you

Re: BootIt BM and External USB Hard Drives

Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 2:20 am
by Brian K
Have a look in your download section and you should see TBOSDT Pro.

https://terabyteunlimited.com/product-download.php

Re: BootIt BM and External USB Hard Drives

Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 5:00 am
by TeraByte Support(PP)
The USBBoot script works with XP.

After you download and extract the tbosdts_pro_bootit_en.zip file (TeraByte OS Deployment Tool Suite Pro for BootIt), you'd want to run the Windows version of the program ("tbosdtw.exe" in the "win" folder).

Re: BootIt BM and External USB Hard Drives

Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 5:13 am
by tscv11
got it. the readme says that "A computer running Windows XP and capable of booting from a USB drive" is required. is this going to be a problem? i am running windows 7, not XP, and i have no idea if my computer could boot from a USB drive, i just know i haven't been able to do so.

thanks

Re: BootIt BM and External USB Hard Drives

Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 6:41 am
by TeraByte Support(PP)
The script won't be able to get Windows 7 booting and running from a USB drive.

Most recent computers can boot from USB drives. How old is your computer?

Re: BootIt BM and External USB Hard Drives

Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 6:55 am
by tscv11
i've had my laptop for less than a year and i bought it new. if you need to know how long it's been since it was manufactured i'll try to dig that info up.

thanks for your help.

Re: BootIt BM and External USB Hard Drives

Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 1:58 pm
by mjnelson99
Look at the settings in the BIOS, especially anything that
says USB. I know USB hard drives is one option I have.

I have USB options in mine that also allow booting SD cards
as well, when attached to my computer or a card reader that
will allow booting since not all of them will.

Chances are there may be something there you can use.
Mary

On 3/14/2012 12:55 AM, tscv11 wrote:
> i've had my laptop for less than a year and i bought it new. if you need to know how long it's been since it was manufactured i'll try to dig that info up.
>
> thanks for your help.
>
>

Re: BootIt BM and External USB Hard Drives

Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 8:47 pm
by tscv11
thanks mary. my bios does have a "usb storage device" in the boot order list. i have tried putting it at the top to no effect. windows just ignores the external usb drive and boots from the internal drive. i have made sure that the system partition of the external drive is "active" and "healthy" with a drive letter assigned, etc. i have been able to boot a recovery environment from my 8 gig usb thumb drive, but i'm told that is a very different situation. please let me know if you have any other ideas about how to make this work.

thank you