>>How do I install the operating system to an external hard drive? Can I use "SYS A:" ? Just kidding, only half of you knew what I was talking about anyway. The old half. <g> Seriously though, when I run the install CD, will it prompt me for the location? Or...what? Thanks!
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>>UPDATE: Found this site http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176 but I really didn't think this was going to be a big deal. I'm trying to reinstall someone's OS onto their hard drive for them. I bought a IDE/USB kit that lets me use their internal drive like an external one with my laptop, but now it looks like I've got to jump through serious hoops to get his XP loaded. If I had known this, I woud have just ripped apart my PC and done it from there. Sometimes I think MS totally sucks.
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>I have no idea if this will help, but can you look at BartPE (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/) and see if you could run that off of a USB drive?
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>I have talked to people who use BartPE to run the OS off of a CD on a machine with a hosed hard drive to see if they can pull data from the hard drive.

That looks pretty cool, I'm going to get it for some future problem I'm sure I'll have, but for now I decided to copy his data onto a CD, formatted the quirky drive (used a USB/IDE/SATA External Enclosure to do that from my laptop), and will mail it back for him to install the OS on his PC directly. If the drive still flakes out, then I'll send him some links to good external drives. <g> The big deal was getting his data off safely, which I did, but I thought it would be bonus if I could easily get his OS up and running too.