Windows 98 on USB External Hard Drive?

I was just wondering if anyone here has any experience installing an OS on an USB external hard drive or USB Memory Stick? I want to install Windows 98 on an external hard drive, problem is I have to install it from boot. The external hard drive is formated in FAT32 and is completely empty. While starting up the drive isn't booted (i.e. it just starts up as normal disregarding the external HD completely) hence I can't install Windows 98 on it. I'm assuming my BIOS supports booting from USB since it's available as an option in my boot order selection. I'm assuming it's not booting since the HD is completely empty? I'm uncertain at this point since my technical knowledge doesn't stretch this far. I know my BIOS setting very well and the only thing related to this is that it has a "Boot from USB HDD" option in my boot order selection (i.e. in what order it tries to boot e.g. HDD -> CD-ROM -> Floppy). Any help is greatly appreciated, tnx.

Edit: I had intented to post this in the hardware section, move accordingly if desired, my bad

Update: Thank you Brianna for moving this thread to the correct forum.

Seems like my BIOS did boot the empty drive, but the screen goes by so fast I didn't notice it. I was looking into creating a bootdisk that has USB support but I had to customize some files also the information I did find was very limited. So, I gave up on that and just went for the easy solution and just connected the HD directly to my IDE cable this way I was able to install Windows 98 easily. Reconnecting the HD to the USB setup I'm able to boot Windows 98 but after loading for a few minutes it comes up with some sort of IOS error or something (I'll write down, translate and post the full error later on) complaining about either not having enough memory or something being damaged (it's not damaged since if I plug it in the IDE cable it boots normally). Never knew how much of a hassle it was to install an OS on a USB device.

Anyhow I may just replace the second IDE hard drive with this one, but I'm not sure how I'd boot from this second drive since my BIOS only gives me the option to boot from HDD it doesn't give me an option to choose which HD to boot from. Any ideas on that? My primairy HD has Windows XP installed on it BTW.

@Brianna: Just to make sure, you have to have a bootable medium in your USB-CD ROM otherwise the BIOS will skip it. Assuming it does, you can't really install USB support in the BIOS, but you should "in theory" be able to make a boot disk that does support your USB-CD ROM, so you can use it to install an OS for example. Just don't ask me how, it's apparently extremely fidgety about what does and does not work depending on your hardware.

@Quaker: Thanks for the suggestion Windows XP on USB has it's own problems though. Regardlessly, I'm only intrested in installing Windows 98 as a secondary OS, since my primairy OS is already Windows XP. The reason I want to install Windows 98 is because I really like to play old games which don't run properly on Windows XP. I've tried VirtualPC but it ran pretty slow and didn't seem to run games properly either.

Thank for the suggestions, appreciate it though.

Moved it for you.

I have no idea though, I have this same problem with my USB CD-DVD Rom drive, I can't boot from CD when using that - even if I tell the BIOS to do it.

I guess it just disregards external peripherals until the system is booted.. there has to be a way to install on it though, I guess my knowledge is just about as limited as yours here so that doesn't help lol.

Windows 98 doesn't have native support for USB drives (afaik), so you would have to install it and then add USB drivers. Sort of a Catch-22.

You may have more luck with installing XP on a USB drive, since XP (and I assume, the installation program) supports USB.

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Ahh good old games, it's always fun to play them.

I still play the very original Age of Empires on this (XP) just fine, and I think that was a win 95/98 game originally.

Anyway it's not important or significant enough to pinpoint the problem with the USB CD-DVD drive. I was trying to install XP on it but no dice, I have real drives now so it's fine.

I suspected there was some particular reason for the Win98. Have you tried running the games under XP by setting the "compatibility mode" to Win98?

You could try some sort of a dual-boot configuration too. Or install Win98 (and the games) on a separate hard drive connected internally in your machine.(could be quite small-ish, think back to HD sizes when Win98 was around), and use a dual-boot loader, or switch in the BIOS.

Meh, I gave up on the whole "boot windows 98 from the USB drive" since it's extremely difficult to accomplish. The biggest problem is when the OS on your USB device intializes the USB ports this obviously creates a conflict. Windows XP has the same problem but there is a work around for it. So that idea is out of the window.

I have two hard drives. So I installed Windows 98 on the second drive but the automatic bootloader doesn't show up :s probably because I disconnected my first HD before installing Windows 98 on the second HD. So any advice? Should I reinstall it with the first HD connected? Any advice on 3rd party boot loaders? I'm completely new to dual or multi booting, so any and all advice is appreciated. Also the second HD doesn't really serve any purpose it doesn't contain any data, well now it has Windows 98. My first HD contains all my data.

Oh, trust me I know how to play 95% of my games on Windows XP, I know all the tips and tricks. Dosbox was a real God sent too. But for those 5% that won't run and also for not having to hassle to play the other games it would be benificial to have a Windows 98 OS.

I don't have an option to choose which HD to boot from in my BIOS it simply says "Boot from HDD". Any advice on boot loaders? Which to use and preferably how to use them?

You could try Virtual PC/ VMware as well. Basically it allows you to run windows in your current windows. Google it for more information.