Can you create bootable hard disks in external hard drive enclossure?

[matis]

I back up by simply slaving a hard drive to my C: drive and cloning C: to that slave, using Acronis software.

Works perfectly.  Once or twice a week I back up this way; few times now this saved my @ss.  I can simply swap the drives and boot the backup.  Or I can use Windows Explorer to copy files or folders from the slave back over the corrupted files on C:.


Now I've got to set up a backup system for my ex-wife.  She's not gonna fool with connecting slave hard disks to the data and power cables.  Not her thing.


I bought a hard disk tray to simplify the slaving process.  This avoids having to deal with cables.  Just slide the tray in, power up and back up.  Problem is the computer only detects this tray intermittently.  I think the tray must be defective.  Works only 6-7 times out of 10.  Theother times the computer cannot see the slave drive.

So heres the question: Can a hard drive inside an external USB enclosure be cloned so that it's bootable?

I tried this with acronis without success.  All I could make was a huge backup file that could be restored if necessary, but all at once, not file by file.

I tried Ghost with the same result.

Do any of you actually use an external USB drive for backup and can you produce bootable images with it?

If you can, I'd appreciate the exact model number and name of the hardware and the software used.

If you use a tray and it's reliable, can you give me the make and model and what software you use?

Must be a way to do this without her fooling with cables and such.

Thanks,


matis

Edit to add:  I forgot to mention: I have extra hard drives so all I need is a USB enclosure, not a complete unit with hard drive.  Same for a tray.

Also if you can see that I'm doing something wrong with Acronis or Ghost please advise.  I'd be satisfied with a USB that doesn't boot so long as I could copy files or folders and not the whole thing, when I had to.

Thanks, again

[TarpleyG]

It can be done because I have some techs out in the field using this method to tote around images.  I am not really sure how but I'll see if I can find out.  Did you google?

Greg

edit to add:

Try here:  http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/usb-boot.mspx

[matis]

Thanks for the url, Greg.  But the material was either general or over my head.

I should've mentioned that I wanted to create a hard drive that was bootable.  I can remove it from the enclosure and make it C: if I actually had to boot it.  Don't need to boot from USB unless I can do so without a PhD in  Computer Science.  

Thanks,


matis

[Vodka7]

You should be able to boot right from USB if your motherboard supports it.  Note that a lot of motherboards will only boot USB is the USB drive is formatted in FAT, so an NTFS backup won't do you any good through USB.

As for backup software, no idea.  Can't you just clone the drive in Ghost instead of creating a boot image?  I don't really have any experience with Ghost.  The most advanced backup I've ever done was running the Maxtor or WD utility program and clicking "Copy C to D"  As a side note, it takes over 14 hours to copy an inches-away-from-death full 200gig HD over to a new one.

[Standing Wolf]

I've been doing that with Macintoshes since about 1986. At the moment, I have two internal hard drives and one external. They're all three bootable. Years ago, I could simply copy the operating system from one to another. Now that we're using the new "improved" OS X, one has to install the operating system.

[TarpleyG]

Thanks for the url, Greg.  But the material was either general or over my head.

I should've mentioned that I wanted to create a hard drive that was bootable.  I can remove it from the enclosure and make it C: if I actually had to boot it.  Don't need to boot from USB unless I can do so without a PhD in  Computer Science.  

Thanks,


matis

If all you want is a mirror drive in a logical sense, just mount your drive on IDE 1 of your ribbon cable (inline with your current drive inside the computer) and it will show up as another hard drive.  Boot up using a boot diskette (or CD) with Ghost on it and clone your current C drive to the new drive.  You can do this once a week or whatever and if you have a crash, just take the IDE 0 connector off the old drive and hook it to the cloned drive and you're in business.  That's the simplest way to do what you want to do if I am reading all this right.

Greg

[Harold Tuttle]

of course you have been doing that on a mac

macs work as expected

i've been running macs sine 1984
thats a 20 year OS

Heck i wonder if i can boot of of this 1 gig memory stick...

[matis]

Matis
If all you want is a mirror drive in a logical sense, just mount your drive on IDE 1 of your ribbon cable (inline with your current drive inside the computer) and it will show up as another hard drive.  Boot up using a boot diskette (or CD) with Ghost on it and clone your current C drive to the new drive.  You can do this once a week or whatever and if you have a crash, just take the IDE 0 connector off the old drive and hook it to the cloned drive and you're in business.  That's the simplest way to do what you want to do if I am reading all this right.

Greg

Greg, I may not have been clear enough in my posts above.


I already do now what you suggested above, except I can clone Ide 0 {C:} to IDE 1 (F: after the 2 CD-roms) from Windows.  Don't need to use floppy or CD.  I also remove the slave drive after cloning in case whatever may take out my C: drive does the same to the clone.

It's easy, quick and sure.  Been backing up that way for years.



The problem is setting up a system FOR MY EX that is easy and requires no fiddling with cables, etc.

She's willing to switch on a USB external drive and clone to it.  Or she can insert a tray into a rack, boot up and clone C: to it.


She just doesn't want to fiddle with what she considers "technical" stuff.  She's a smart lady, but dealing with cables on a hard drive is just not her thing.

So what I need to know is how to clone from C: to a hard drive in an USB external enclosure.  I'd like that hard drive to be bootable, but not necessarily from the external enclosure, unless that's possible.  If I need to boot from the clone I can remove the drive from the USB enclosure and hang it on the IDE cable as C:.

Or --  I need a recommendation for a hard disk tray that slides in and out of a rack installed in one of the 5.25 bays on the case.  I've been doing the tray thing for 2 months now, but find that the computer sometimes sees the slave drive in the tray  and sometimes it doesn't.

But a tray that someone has been using and that works reliably unlike the one I bought.



In other words I want to set her up so that she can do her own backups.  If she crashes and needs to restore I can come over and handle that.



Thanks again,



matis

[Harold Tuttle]

i would look at these:
http://www.informationweek.desktoppipeline.com/howto/172302082

October 18, 2005

Review: Three One-Touch Backup Drives

External hard drives from Maxtor, IOGear, and Seagate let you back up your data at the touch of a button.

[TarpleyG]

Okay then...my first post describes how to do what you want.  If your BIOS supports booting from the USB controller, all that's needed is to add the necessary boot files and ghost.exe to that external drive.  When you boot, boot to that drive, run Ghost, and clone away.  The only wire necessary is a USB cable and a power supply.  Once cloned, reboot like normal.

Greg

[matis]

Okay then...my first post describes how to do what you want.  If your BIOS supports booting from the USB controller, all that's needed is to add the necessary boot files and ghost.exe to that external drive.  When you boot, boot to that drive, run Ghost, and clone away.  The only wire necessary is a USB cable and a power supply.  Once cloned, reboot like normal.

Greg

Thanks Greg, I'm going to try that.  The ext USB drive I now have has my daughter's laptop backed up to it, so I'll just leave that alone 'till she gets back to town from school.  I'm gonna buy another ext USB enclosure to use with one of my extra hard drives lying around here.

If I can make bootable clones on it, great!

If I cannot, I'll just find software that can backup everything in such a way as to allow me to copy back individual files or folders as needed.

Next time I boot up computer I'll go into bios to see if it supports booting from USB.  It's a newer mobo for the AMD Athlon 64 cpu, so chances are good.




Harold Tuttle, thanks for the url.  Reading that article helped me to decide to go with ext usb backup, whether I could make bootable clones, or not.

Thanks to all who answered.


matis

[matis]

I've solved the backup problem for my ex-wife.



I bought an external USB enclosure and popped a WD200 gig drive into it.

I used Acronis to clone the C: drive to it.

When I tried to boot from the USB drive, it "tried" to, but couldn't go all the way.  Probably missing the files Greg mentioned in previous Post.

Since it "tried", I removed the drive from the enclosure, hung it on the cable as C.: and lo and behold -- IT BOOTED.

That solves my problem then.  She can easily, plug n play, hot synch clone her c: drive to the USB one twice a week.

Since the backup is only rarely needed, there is no need for my input.

Should she crash and need to use the backup.  I can come over, remove the usb drive, hang it on as C: and -SAVE THE DAY!

I'm such a hero!


Thanks to all for your ideas.




matis