Can my laptop, without internal hard, boot from an external drive?

I'm wondering if it is possible to set up my laptop, which doesn't have an internal harddrive, to instead boot from and use an external one via USB?

My laptop has USB ports, yes.

It has no harddrive because the old drive died, and the frame that it nestles was glued to it and won't come off. I can not get a new frame, I've searched low and high for it.

I was thinking I could pop in a new harddrive, and maybe just tape it in or use velcro or something to keep it from jostling so much, and perhaps when transporting the laptop (which I wouldn't do all that often anyway) just take the drive out and hold it in the safety of bubble wrap.

But if it's possible to set it up to boot using an external drive, that's a solution I'm totally rocking to go with.

The only question I can see with that option is that without software already loaded, I don't know how the laptop would know how to use the USB port to talk to the external drive. But I'm hoping I'm totally wrong there.

Any expert advice?

It will boot from any drive it can find. Needs some CMOS settings probably!

Plastic tiedowns work great to hold interior drive down tight.

depends.

But would definitely be able to boot from floppy/CROM without HD.

How can I make a boot CD-ROM?

Or how would I do it with a floppy?

And also, how do I make a bootable CD-ROM?

Thanks!

windows or whatever operating system you choose to the external. Given the choice I would liquid nail, tie down strap an internal drive as they are much faster than external.

As the computer is now three years old, I'd likely replace in a year or two anyway.

Ah, decisions, decisions...

And thanks for the encouragement!

of course, I wasn't thinking - the BIOS would already have to know how to find and handle the USB ports, wouldn't it?

Thanks!

and the computer will find it if usb is enabled in cmos settings. it will find any usb devise automaticly. if it finds one it will find them all.

and go to "Boot Sequence". If USB/External drive is one of the options, then yes (I have never seen this, but maybe on a newer machine). Otherwise, no.

2x faster if it can be done

Good idea otherwise, though!

and ended up just putting the new harddrive in, without the frame, and added some padding around it, etc., so it sits snugly. I realized, after actually putting it in (which I should have done months ago, so I could have been using the damn laptop), the drive actually holds pretty snugly just from the pins.

So with the pins, the smallness of the chamber, and some padding, I think that baby is in there pretty much as snugly as it would be with the metal frame it's supposed to be in.

And, you know, if it fails in a year or two it fails. Whoopty doo. I never put anything on it (or any other computer) that I don't backup anyway. :-)