Internal HD bad, want to use external

[baalze]

Year old laptop, and my hard drive is going bad. Random files go missing as if the FAT table is bad. I usually wipe the hd every 3 months, but then it was 3 weeks, 3 days, 2 days.... A few hours after re-installikng defrag won't initialize, chkdsk comes back screaming corrupted corrupted corrupted, norton/spybot say clear skies.

Running xp and the internal is a 5400, don't know the seek speed, but I have an external connected via usb - is it possible to use that as the main hd? If so, how do I specify which hd is the main/C:?

Bios only let me choose main/right bay/left bay/dvd-cd/floppy/lan for booting order, and under device manager I can disable my internal drive... but I'm not sure how to do what I need to do. Control panel/admin tools/computer management/storage, find my external and then... ???

If it is boot to lan, do I need to switch the external to ntfs and partition it before i install xp onto it?

Buying a new tower in a month during the after x-mas blowout sales, then i'll send the laptop in to gateway to replace it, but this would get me by until then.

[snowmonkey]

Short answer to your question is "No" , you can't have an external hard drive as a main drive. Newer computers will allow you to boot from a External USB device but I'm not sure if that capability is the Gateway laptop.


Cheers

[baalze]

Actually, I found software on my seagate disc that lets me do it quick and simple, problem solved.