On 14/09/2011 21:55, David WE Roberts wrote:

"John Williamson" wrote in message
...
David WE Roberts wrote:

To be absolutely clear, I want to install to and run XP from a 40Gb
external USB HDD.
I don't want to use the HDD to install on my internal drive (which at
4Gb SSD in an EEE PC 900 is too small to comfortably run XP).
I have an external USB CD/DVD drive to use for my XP CD.
I want to use XP because I have bought the OEM CD which proved to me
that running XP from the SSD is too much like hard work.

Not the way you say you want to do it, but I am running XP Home on an
EEE PC701, with the 4Gb SSD.

The sneaky bit was installing 2 Gig of RAM, and using a 32Gig SDHC
card for programs and data. I also formatted the SSD as NTFS and
compressed the filesystem. There is no swap needed with this much RAM
in spite of Windows' dire warnings, so I set the swap size to zero. I
also remove the backup folders whenever Windows updates itself using a
program called, rather boringly, Windows Update Remover. Disable your
browser caching, too. The only gotchas are that system restore and
hibernation aren't possible and things slow right down when the free
space on C: drops below about 400Meg.

Another possibility with the EEE PC 701s is to replace the wifi card
with a PCI Express SSD, and that will give you up to 64 Gig of
space,and you can use a USB dongle for wifi. Some early ones actually
have a spare PCI Express socket on the motherboard, and they all have
the solder pads and space to fit one.
--
Tciao for Now!

John.

With you until you mentioned a 64Gb SSD - being of poor and 'umble stock
this is not financially attractive.
Besides, I already have the USB HDD.
I have programs and data moved over to the second 16Gb SSD - however
this is reportedly too slow to run XP effectively if the OS is installed
there.
I also have the drive compressed and regularly clear out all but the
latest restore point.
It is the windows updates that are killing me, despite regular attempts
to sweep up behind them.
I could also get a fast SDHC card but the EEE PC 900 treats this as USB
attached at which point my bucket springs a familiar hole.

I originally planned to nLite the XP install and reinstall on the 4Gb
SSD but if I could just install on the 40Gb USB HDD it would make life
so much easier.
However, life was not meant to be easy.

Cheers

Dave R

Been there done that on a 901. The 16GB SSD is *far* slower than the 4GB
one, and not worth using for boot. I agree that the updates are a PITA
for filling up the disk.
In the end I gave up with Micro****e, and put on EasyPeasy:
http://www.geteasypeasy.com/ and more recently Ubuntu.
EasyPeasy was good, and quick, but was intermittent with WPA networks.
Ubuntu seems better in this respect, but version 11.04 is a bit slow. I
may switch it to the 10.x release soon.

Linux + OpenOffice on an Eee is a fairly good combination for day-to-day
use.

Alan.