Can a portable hard drive be formatted as a bootable USB?

portable hard drive partitioning windows 7 image

rubixmaste

I know that Flash USB's are capable of being formatted into USB's that the computer can boot from the BIOS, but can the same be done with a Portable hard drive such as one from Western Digital (the passport types) ? And if so, will it completely work?

Thanks in advance!

Answer
yes, it will work perfectly. but there are procedures to be done. follow the steps

** creating a windows vista/7 bootable USB drive

* this can only be done using machines with vista or 7

* run command prompt as administrator

c:\diskpart

DISKPART> list disk

DISKPART> select disk 1 (assuming usb drive is disk 1)

DISKPART> clean

DISKPART> create partition primary

DISKPART> select partition 1

DISKPART> active

DISKPART> format fs=NTFS (this will format the usb drive)

DISKPART> assign

DISKPART> exit (this will exit diskpart command)

* insert windows vista/7 into ODD

c:\cd d:\boot

c:\boot\bootsect /nt60 g: (assuming usb drive is named g:)

* use windows explorer to copy all windows vista/7 files and folders from CD

* restart PC to be configured and locate BIOS setup & change the boot sequence to USB drive as priority

How to retrieve files on a WD external hard drive with a mac.?

Brandon

I used a portable hard drive to back up some files from a PC. Now I need to retrieve those files using a mac. when I try to open the hard drive it tells me that it is not readable. How can I make this thing work so that I can get my files.

Answer
Answer for Windows 7 and OS 10.6.8:

The drive volume has errors. Windows doesn't care much about errors. OS X does, so it won't mount. Repair it on the Windows system like this....
-- Right-click the drive volume in "Computer".
-- Choose "Properties".
-- Choose "Tools".
-- At "Error checking", click the "Check Now" button.
-- Put a check mark (tick) for "Automatically fix file system errors".
-- Put a check mark (tick) for "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors".
-- Click the "Start" button.
-- Click to unmount.
-- Wait.

To do this in OS X....
-- Download and install either NTFS-3G or SL-NTFS (latter for OS 10.6.7 or later 64--bit).
-- Restart.
-- Connect the drive. At the alert message, click "Ignore".
-- Open Disk Utility.
-- Select the external volume ("Volume" is the partition name, probably faded appearance).
-- Select the "First Aid" tab.
-- Click the "Repair Disk" button.
-- Wait.

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