Cloning - Can't create a bootable hard drive
I have an internal 2TB hard drive divided into four 500GB partitions.
I bought an external 2TB hard drive which I initialized into one partition. I tried using the Acronis 2014 cloning function to copy my internal 2TB hard drive onto my external 2TB drive.
The copy worked (the cloned external 2TB hard drive has the same four partitions as does the original internal 2TB hard drive) but I am unable to boot from the cloned external 2TB drive.
I am using a Dell Dimension 8400 running Windows XP. When I try and boot off the cloned 2TB drive the Dell Dimension machine boots up (I set it to boot of a USB connection) and Windows XP starts to open. Then the machine locks and I have to power it down by pulling out the power cable.
I would be grateful if anyone could advise me where I am going wrong.

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http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa940868(v=winembedded.5).aspx
You might look here, I agree with Joey but in some cases with the right hardware you can boot XP from an external USB device. Read through the links provided in the link supplied as the requirements for doing what your after are fairly strict.
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Thanks for the comments. I see my problems.
Perhaps you could help me with this issue. Now that I've copied my Dell Dimension 8400 2TB internal hard drive to an external 2TB hard drive, I'd like to clone the C Drive partition on the external hard drive (500GB with about 104GB of files on it) to a 200GB internal hard drive.
I want the cloned 200GB internal hard drive to be bootable. This way I have a bootable C drive with all my programs on it just in case my Dimension 2TB internal hard drive fails.
To help the clone along, since the 2TB drive I'm cloning from is obviously bigger than the 200GB I'm cloning to, I was thinking of deleting the D, E and F partitions on the 2TB drive that I've just cloned (I had trouble in the past trying to create a bootable 200/250GB internal hard drive from a larger 1TB drive).
So I was wondering if you have a suggestions about the feasibility of this endeavor? Will Acronis clone the occupied part of a larger hard drive (in this case a 2TB drive with 104GB of occupied space - once I delete drives/partitions D, E and F [would it be a good idea to defragment the C drive before I try and clone it?]) to a smaller hard drive (in this case a 200GB internal drive)?
Thanks again for explaining why I couldn't boot from my cloned external drive. I very much appreciate you comments.
I'd be very grateful for any comments you might have on the next stage of my project to create a bootable backup disk for my desktop.
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Windows USB Booting....
My understanding is you CAN boot windows off a USB device, pen drive or HDD.
There should be plenty of articles on the web to show you how to configure your PC for this purpose.
Alternatively look at using an external SATA drive (get a cheap drive caddy for it) if your PC has a port for it.
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Regarding your most recent question, surely it would be easier to just create a dual-boot installation without messing with all this cloning, then just clone that entire newly reconfigured drive?
Just run Windows installer for a second time and point it at the new (D:\ ?) partition?
This will also automatically create a suitable boot option to switch between the two installations when needed. (Because I suspect that will be your next question. :-) )
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