How to change boot drive

If you go into the BIOS and there isn't an option in the Boot Sequence for USB devices then your model doesn't support booting from a USB drive.  

 

From a practical standpoint it is better to leave your internal hard drive as the boot drive and use the new external drive for program and data storage.

The newer Dell systems lack the ability to individually select the hard drive in which to boot from.  The best you can do in the boot sequence is designate a device catagory such an primary optical drive, USB device,  primary hard drive or floppy drive.

Ron, try going into your BIOS Setup and disabling the BIOS option for USB Emulation.  That option can be found in the sub-menu for Integrated Devices.  Once that option is disable the USB ports will be inactive until Windows loads from your internal hard drive.  If that setting doesn't eliminate the external drive from booting then change the USB port that the external drive is plugged into.  On some Dell systems there is one USB port that is active all the time regardless of how the USB Emulation is set.  At the moment I can't recall if your model was one of them. 

 

The downside to disabling USB Emulation is that if you are using a wireless - USB keyboard it will not function during boot up or when doing non-Windows activities.  Then again if your system has the one active USB port you could plug the keyboard receiver into that one.  Usually the active port is on the rear of the system on the upper right.

I have a similar situation

I installed an external SATA Hard drive.  My 4600 automatically considers the external HD to be the boot drive. I have been unsuccessful in being able to change the boot drive order since the only options that present themselves are Hard drive, CD Rom and Floopy drive.

 

Dell Tech support suggsted that I spend $$$$ to solve this rather basic question because they don't kow the answer and considered the question to be to advaced.  It did not seem to matter thatI purchased a complete coverage contractwhen I made the initial system purchase.

 

Any suggestions/solution would be gretaly appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

Rom

Thanks for the suggestion, however the Sata drive is connect via the motherboard slot0 and not via a USB connection.

 

Ron

Ron, then there isn't much you can do.  If the external drive is connected via the motherboard SATA port then the system will always choose the SATA drive over a PATA for booting.   

Thanks for the info.

Seems like something that Dell tech support should have been able to provide.

 

Ron