[PLUG] usb ide enclosures

[Keith Lofstrom]

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 10:31:13AM -0800, Denis Heidtmann wrote:
> What are the difficulties of getting an ide drive in a usb enclosure
> to boot?  It will be running Windows ME (gag).  Do I have to look for
> anything special when shopping for the enclosure?  (I have the drive.)
> 
> This is my present idea of how to use my HP S20 scanner.  It ran fine
> when I dual-booted to Windows ME, but switching to VirtualBox (Ubuntu
> host) and Win 2k stopped that.

A couple of years ago, some IDE to USB interface chips would not work
with Linux, only Windows.  Usually, these chipsets violated the USB
standard and counted on a Windows driver to work around that. 
Available chipsets have changed, kernels have improved, so I don't
know how things are now.  Test things first if you can.

After that, booting from USB must be enabled by the laptop or
motherboard BIOS, and the USB interface will need to follow
standards for the BIOS USB to work.  USB boot can be a little
tricky - often you have to go into the BIOS each time you want
to boot from USB.  That said, I have booted from both USB hard
drives and flash drives with newer motherboards.

If you want to use a large SATA drive, then the Vantec Nextar
"drive toaster" is an interesting way to go.  Some other brands
will not handle a >500GB drive.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs