wanna do super geek impossible boot OS from HD connected through USB

I have a Vantec IDE/SATA to 2.0 USB adapter I use with my laptop. At the other end is my 500 gig regular hard drive. The company says booting an OS from it is not "supported" but I cannot help but think that if I used a fast Linux distro like Zorin that it would not work.. only it hasn't so far but that might be just me not setting things up right.

My laptop Can boot from UBS and if I had an OS installed on a UBS drive, it would work.. so why not a regular drive connected through the USB?

If I could get it to work I'd set up 100 gigs for Zorin ( or another distro) and use the rest of the space for storage.

 

Tried changing the boot order in the BIOS?

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/tipstricks/ht/bootusbflash.htm

 

I can use Unetbootin to set up a live OS on a 4 gig UBS drive and that boots just fine. It seems that nothing but windows explorer will see the drive connected through a USB.. Unetbootin doesn't recognize it as a USB drive otherwise I would use it to set up the OS. I can install an OS on it just fine by telling the installer to install to that device, only it wont boot.

I was hoping someone knew some tricks to get either this working or Unetbootin to see it.

 

You might not only change the boot order in the BIOS but look for an option to boot from USB. Some mobos have it and some don't. If the option is there obviously enable it. I have nothing else to suggest if it does not.

 

DarkPhoenix,

As you have discovered, the following OS will boot from a USB HD.
DOS, WinPE, Linux.

You can get WinXP to boot from a USB HD with this script.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/tbosdt.htm

See Additional Items, USBBoot 2.04