I am pretty sure I have found the right hardware for booting Vista from an
external SATA hard drive on a laptop. The laptop needs an ExpressCard/34
slot for this to work. Please see
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-2sm2-e/
You will also need
http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sataitol.html
The drivers for XP are included on the cd. I do not know if the drivers
will work with Vista, but they would be loaded at the Load Drivers button
with the drivers cd in the drive and the 2sm2-e folder chosen. If XP
drivers don't work I understand that SeriTek will be doing Vista drivers in
time for rtm.

Warning: At this time Seagate drives are not detected by the adaptor. So
far as I know, all others are detected. I have an Hitachi SATA drive that
is detected by both XP and OS/X using this card and the supplied drivers.
Neither of my laptops could see a Seagate drive in the enclosure, however.
This is consistent with the information on the forums I have been reading.



For a typical SATA enclosure, see
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817145006
Be sure to click on the right thumbnail to get a good view of the back of
the enclosure showing the usb and SATA connections. Mounting the hard drive
in the enclosure is simple, but, of course, you must use a SATA drive even
if you plan to only use it as a usb data drive. Do NOT try an IDE enclosure
with a IDE/SATA bridge.

Among my many computers I have a MacBook Pro. I came across the SeriTek
adaptor in an Apple forum and decided to check it out. At this point I am
using an Hitachi 500GB Deskstar in an Athena Power enclosure and the SeriTek
adaptor (with an eSATA to SATA cable) with the MacBook Pro.

I split the drive into one Windows partition and one OS/X partition. I dual
boot XP and OS/X on the MBP (both from the internal drive) and both see and
access the external drive just fine. It is detected as an internal drive,
and that's why I see no barrier to using it as a Windows boot drive.

I have also tried the adaptor on my wife's Compaq Presario 4025US and it
sees the Hitachi as an internal drive also. My wife is not about to let me
try dual booting Vista x64 on her laptop (sigh), so I have not tried this
out with Vista. I thought some of you might want to check this out. It is
a way to avoid partitioning a laptop hard drive. In fact, if my wife will
just relent, I plan to try both Vista x86 and x64 using it.