Legit Reviews

I have 3 computers.

I Just bought a Seagate 500GB external (USB/SATA/FW) Hard Drive.

I want to use the USB for all of this if possible.

I need to get software that will allow me to do all of the following:
I need to be able to boot off this external hard drive sometimes, through USB if possible, I dont know how to make it bootable. I need a software that can do this? Or Should I just install windows on it? Sounds like a nightmare.

I would like to be able to dual boot with it, sometimes windows XP, sometimes maybe linux or even vista or windows 98. Is that even possible? All those OS's on one external USB hard drive?

I need to be able to IMAGE the entire contents of my three computers hard drives into separate folders or partitions in the external drive. The reason for an image is I no longer own the software programs that is installed on some of these computers, so an image is necessary to maintain the software installations.

And lastly, if there are multiple OS's installed, do I need to partition this external with different File systems? For instance would/can I make a FAT 32 partition for windows 98 to boot on, and maybe a NTFS partition for NT or something?

Im doing my own research and searches but these questions are baseline everything ive found so far picks up after all of these questions.

you want to do a lot with that drive.

booting to it, not sure, If your board is not set up for booting to USB then I'd say no. I know that some newer motherboards allow booting to USB thumb drives for updates and the like.

Imaging the drive is not hard, need something like Norton Ghost.

Installing OS's to an external drive, not sure I understand that one. I'm not even so sure it can be done. might be able to run a virtual PC and go at it that way, they would still need a partition setup for each. fat32 for 98 (and xp if you wanted), NTFS for XP, ext3 for Linux, and so on.

I'd think the choke point of the data going through the usb would detour you from wanting to install an OS that way.

Thats true, So if I wanted to boot off it, I could use maybe the SATA cable, It has SATA support.

So lets say I just put 1 OS on it, Windows XP. Just to boot, using SATA if I have to, of course. but laptops dont have SATA so ugh.

Well lets focus on data restoration. Norton ghost can image a drive, ok ill buy that for that.

What about partition magic? I have 8.0 I was thinking of using it to partition this external into a 3 different drives, one for each computer I want to image, what do you think? Or is that a waste of time, just use folders instead of drive partitions...

I am more concerned with backing up data and having it accesible than being able to boot or have an OS on this external I guess. I just think way ahead in emergency situations I may not have any way to get a computer booted up...
And windows in the past has used my other drives for swap files, without me knowing, so If I booted off another hard drive it would use my slave for a swap file, then when the slave (external) was unhooked suddenly windows wouldnt boot anymore from the primary.

heres an update

I bought ACRONIS HOME which can make a single file that is a copy of the hard drive, and store it onto my external drive. That seems like a good idea. I cut the external up into 3 partitions and am going to put the backup files on each one.

from there I suppose ill just make a bootable CD or something, and use it in case of emergency I guess, using the external drive and acronis home software to replace the contents of the drive.