External hard drive

[jx2mad]

I have a compact desktop computer with a bung hard drive. Is it possible to boot this using an external hard drive vie usb port? Somehow I don't think so.

[loanrangie]

I believe some motherboards allow for USB booting (in the bios settings) but it wouldnt be my first choice, get a new hdd set it up as a secondary drive then use a cloning program like seagate seatools to copy all the files over to the new hdd - a clean install is always preferred but a clone to restore the system to previous working state.

[djam1]

Presume that it has a 2.5 inch notebook drive if it does buy one on ebay put it in and away you go

[JDNSW]

All computers I have been involved that have USB with (not all that many!) can be booted from it by changing the boot sequence in the BIOS settings.

John