Vista - Complete Backup and Restore to/from External USB?

A complete computer backup (80 GB hard drive running Vista Ultimate) was done to an external USB (Maxtor 500GB). To do a complete restore, is there a way to have the USB drive recognized as a boot up device or does this type of restore have to be done through DVD?

New to the forum -
Thanks for you help!

BB

Depends whether your mobo bios supports boot from usb

"BuzziBoy" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:c21311731f9816becbf26b51b63c0841@xxxxxx-gateway.com...

DL, Thank you for your reply... Greatly appreciated!! I'd like to check that... what do I need to do to determine if the mobo bios supports USB?

BB

On Tue, 19 May 2009 09:00:27 -0500, BuzziBoy <guest@xxxxxx-email.com>
wrote:
Enter the BIOS and look at the options. You should see brief
instructions when you start the computer that tell you how to enter
the BIOS or "Setup". It is often accomplished by tapping the DEL or
F2 key

Jim,

Thank you for your answer. On checking, this Inspiron just has the USB controller [enabled]... but doesn't have a boot sequence option to include it. I'm assuming then I'm out of luck... or is there a way to improvise? Sure doesn't seem to make sense to be able to back up to a device and not restore from it.

Worst case: Do you know if there is a way to transfer the back up instructions and data on the USB to DVD? The .vhd file is 22GB.

Thanks,

BB