laptop won't boot from external hard disk

johnlittle · #1 Apr 15, 2008, 04:44 PM

I used Acronis 11 to clone the internal hd on my laptop to an external usb hd. I back up my desktop in this way and it works great. Internal drive breaks or gets zapped by a virus and I simply boot from the external.

If I boot normally and connect the external drive via USB after windows loaded the new drive is identified in explorer as drive f: and all files appear to be present. If I leave the hd plugged in and go into the BIOS and set the boot order to USB hard drive first I get an error message. I also tried removing the internal hd but no success.

I phoned tech support for this laptop and one rep told me you can't boot from an external drive another said you can.

Any help would be appreciated

John



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