eSATA External HDD Help!

I just bought a new WD Caviar Black 1TB and installed it internally in my computer. Loaded Vista Home Premium with no problems.

I took my old WD Caviar Black 250GB (windows xp) and put it in an Antec MX-1 external enclosure and finally got the computer to see the external drive using the JMicron eSATA ports.

If I am in Vista on the internal drive, I can see all the files on the external drive, but can't figure out how to import them into the Vista HDD. I want to boot from the external drive, just as if it were installed internally, but it won't let me. My thought is if I could boot from my old HDD that is now external, I can just backup or import the files I need to the new HDD.

When it begins to boot from the external HDD, it displays the "windows xp" logo and the little action bar for about 1 second and then a quick BSOD going immediately back to post.

I have not setup a RAID, nor do I necessarily want one, I simply want to be able to boot from my external HDD and be able to use either disk independently. If I want Vista, I boot from internal - If I want XP, I boot from external.

How do I do this and why is it so hard for me to figure out the problem?

Any help is greatly appreciated!!

Im a bit confused... Why cant you just copy the files you want off the external and put them on the internal?

I can't believe I didn't think of that.........

Here's the problem. I really only need to access my old outlook contacts and messages. When I exported them before removing the hard drive, I exported as .pst files. I don't have Outlook now and am using Windows Mail and it wants .csv files to import contacts and something called an .iaf file for the messages.

Vista won't let me use my Office 2003, so I can't install Outlook and import and I'm not buying Office 2007 yet.

I could reinstall my old hard drive back in the case and try to figure out a way to import/export all this stuff, but the whole point of having eSATA is being able to use it at a speed close to an internal drive.

Any ideas again are greatly appreciated, as I can't be the only person with this problem.

My guess is Outlook wont run from the external, so you could do one of two things.

First, put the external back in your machine. Boot to it, open outlook, export the contacts to a CSV file, then you should be able to import them into windows mail.

Second, download the 60 day trial of Office 2007, install it, import your pst file to Outlook 2007 then export it to a CSV file to import to your windows mail


As to why you cannot boot from the external, this I cannot say as I have never tried to do that. Would just be quicker to boot it internally quickly and export what you need than to troubleshoot the external boot problem. You can revisit that problem later after you get all your outlook info.

why dont you just pop that baby back in and dual boot?
Or use Windows Easy Transfer to pull them off of the old hard drive?

Thanks

This is the best forum on the web and I appreciate everyone's response to this question, however, due to the fact I cannot use the Office 2003 and other issues, I am going back to XP for now.

Since the Vista was free with my wifes laptop, I'm not out any cash on the OS, so no skin lost.

Thanks again for the replies!