OT: Render External USB Harddrive As Non-Bootable

Doesn't that have 2000 have a "CMOS" mode- press PAUSE at startup or something- brings up a table where you specify boot-up drive sequence....

Go into the BIOS setup, by hitting F1 or F2 or DEL while the system is booting (the exact key varies from one manufacturer to the next). In the setup you may find a "boot" page that lets you control boot device order. Just put the internal hard drive ahead of the USB one in the list. If that's not possible, since some BIOSes just let you set the device class order, like HD, Floppy, CD, etc, then see if there is an option to totally disable booting USB devices. My system shows a "USB Boot" option that can be set to "enable" or "disable."

Good idea, I'll look for that.

Thanks!

...Jim Thompson

Another thing to look for is "legacy UBS support" Basically it enables the USB to work in DOS mode,without windows drivers. If you have a USB keyboard,you might HAVE to have it enabled to even be able to press the F1/DEL whatever key to get into the CMOS,atleast you do on some of the older boards with USB. (IE,no USB no keyboard.)

I suspect that Jim is sufficiently sophisticate not to have a computer of this ilk! :-)

Jim, if you fdisk your added drive without setting an active partition, then re-boot it attached to say a Windows XP system, XP will on re-boot automatically ask you if you want it to re-format the drive, or (grunt) do it on it's own. It will normally format it as un-bootable, although there may be a way to override this if you have a reason to do so. I'm not sure how this works on Win2000.

The problem that I ran into with never versions of Windows, was that (just using Win XP as an example) was that Win XP took the existing FAT-16 or FAT-32 on the disk being formatted and accepted it literally without question. This can be problematic when re-using existing hard drives. While there may be other and better solutions, the only way I 'quickly' found to get around it was to boot and old Win98 boot disk in the floppy drive (which contains the fdisk executable) and fdisk the old drive to FAT-32 with new partitions set as desired).

Then (at least with Win XP), it picks up on the presence of the new drive, and formats it (with prompts). To me, this is sort of automation carried to an extreme, but when you consider that Microsoft is simply trying to simplify life for their 'average consumer', it makes at least some sense.

I have only one USB connected drive, and in order to fdisk it, I had to plug the drive into a IDE cable, then reconnect it in it's USB mount prior to booting Win XP. I've never had any boot ambiguity using this method. Then too, you may want to check on your boot sequence in your CMOS setting, to assure that your boot sequence is limited to your #1 (C-drive) possibly followed by your A-drive.

Just for the record, I looked high and low on my Win XP Pro distribution disk an couldn't locate fdisk anywhere on it! Perhaps I missed something, but having the old utility progams still laying around (dating back even to DOS 1.3 and 5.0) have in many recent days saved my ass!

Kindest regards,

Harry C.

Hi Jim,

As Carl said, the computer is told where to boot from the BIOS. It shouldn't even have tried from the USB if that wasn't set.

Another area to look is Control Panel -> System -> System Properties -> Advanced. The top entry there needs to point to the desired operating system.

Regards, Joerg

In XP you right click on my computer, and click on manage. Learn the difference between its and it's. If you change the it's to it is, and it doesn't make sense, then the damn apostrophe doesn't belong there.

there is also a checkbox for search for other bootable devices in XP so unclick it and make sure you have it set for Floppy as your first boot seek and the CDrom as your second and then the 3rd is your HD that you want it to boot from. if you ever have a problem with windows and have to boot from your recovery disk or your XP cd you will be thankful for the boot order.

Doug

This should also be set from the BIOS. Then you can leave your primary HDD as 1st boot device, until there's a problem, then go into the BIOS and change the settings on the rare occasions when you want to boot from a floppy. Otherwise the system spins up the floppy drive (and the CDROM if there's a disk in it) on every boot, which is a waste of time.

Any idea why w2k, freshly installed, entered an XP OS in boot.ini and pointed it to partition 3 which was created from unused disk space and formatted prior to installing w2k? It was created and formatted as fat32 with System Commander.

And set the bios settings password if physical security isn't enough. Then no one can boot from floppy or cd and snatch your data which should be on another partition (OS partition gets hosed... data gets hosed.) OS user settings may keep people from messing with your files, but if someone sneaks in and boots another OS... there goes that quintillion dollar idea to run your car off water.

Er... there might be a shunt the thief can use to wipe out the CMOS, so there's always the thing called a case lock. Maybe removing the part of the header where the shunt goes would slow him down.

Encryption? I wouldn't bank on it if the data's *that* valuable.

Hi Active8,

No idea, I am only a guy who has to use windows for biz reasons and doesn't particularly like it. All I heard is that if you start using another Win system the old stuff better be gone or may never run right. That's what an IT guy told me.

Regards, Joerg

I think that makes sense. When I installed w2k the 1st time, it found a SystemCommander or Boot Magic MBR with the old XP entry for partition 3 (part 1 was also XP, but I was formatting that with w2k install and thus it would be wiped out) and added it. Then I destroyed all but OS and data partitions, created an app and data partition, and reloaded w2k without first deleting the XP entry in boot.ini - the 2nd install of 2k found that.

I find that a few well placed blows from a carpenter's framing hammer will render almost anything non-bootable.

Jim

I read in sci.electronics.design that Jim Meyer wrote (in ) about 'OT: Render External USB Harddrive As Non- Bootable', on Fri, 20 Aug 2004:

Even your left foot. (;-)

On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 17:37:15 +0100, John Woodgate wroth:

When all your fingers finally go, you still have to hold the nails somehow. I haven't worked out what I'll use after the toes are all gone.

Jim "Lefty" Meyer

I'd tell you to stick the nail through a bit of card and hold that, but then you'd probably be upset that you needlessly mangled all your fingers.

Tim

Pull hard drive cable, plug into laptop.

There are encryptors available that cannot practically be cracked.

Then again, there are other solutions, from installing keylogging hardware, to cameras, to beating you until you decide to reveal the password.