Trying to make a bootable WinXP Pro External Drive from using the Quickrestore CD for a Compaq Evo N800c Laptop. To be frank, I wish to boot from the external drive (which the laptop allows) when I want to run my personal programs (games and such) on my offtime without installing them to the main drive where only work related programs are permitted. To install XP and the default factory laptop settings to the NTFS-formatted external USB drive I used the Compaq Quickrestore software (I removed the main HD so that the External drive was the only drive available to install XP to.) After running the Quickrestore CD to its completion it rebooted and stated that it would begin installation of XP. Unfortunately, upon the first reboot I got the "Cannot find NTDLR" error - which I believe indicates that the External USB drive isn't bootable. However, upon inspection it appears that the installation formatted what appears to be a small recovery partition in which are win xp / system installation files (16G - FAT32) and left the remainder of the drive is an unallocated partition, which, I find strange as I did do a quickformat to NTFS before starting this experiment.
In regards to all of this I have a few questions:
What could have gone wrong in the installation? (I assume the answer to this could be one of a million things)
Why is the recovery partition FAT 32 when XP requires NTFS?
How do I make the External Drive bootable? (Again, my laptop allows booting from USB drives.)
Are the recovery partition files just for installation purposes or does XP actually run from that partition, and all data and program files exist in another partition? Or was xp supposed to be installed from the recovery partition to the remainder of the drive that was for some reason still not formatted to NTFS?
In either situation, which partition do I set as bootable, the recovery or the remainder (which I would format to NTFS), or both?
I guess what I'd really like to know is how to take the external drive in its current state to a functioning drive complete with OS and necessary drivers which I am certain are stored in that small 16 G partition waiting for proper installation.
My apologies for any misuse of terminology - it is obvious I'm no computer expert
Thanks,
Stentor
Linear Mode
