getting dos to recognise my USB hdd

Acer aspire 1690 . I need to back up my data cause my xp got corrupted.

1. st problem is ,how do u Make USB drive boot when Acer notebooks do not support booting from a USB ?

2.nd

I have used both Panasonics USBASPI ASPI Manager for USB mass-storage Version 2.20 &
duse.exe both come up with error message.
The error message they bring up is simply says,"error loading usbaspi driver".

However, Duse.exe says the same thing, but it knows there is something plugged in , in the usb, but the problem is in 3 seconds later it says "failed to detect usb storage device."

The weird thing is if I pull my external hdd
usb out, it says "usb unplugged". When I put it back in again ,it says "detected usb storage device", 3 sec later back to "failed to detect usb storage device".
I would like to know why this happens and how to remedy this. I also would like to know what drive letter the usb would be on
if the driver loaded successfully.

e: is used by the cd
a: I have no floppy
c: my hdd
d: 2nd partition on c
r: the ram produced by the programs on the cd

Also I would like to know how much free space I am suppose to have on c: and d: ?
both still have 1.7gig of free space.
But when I run scanreg from dos it says
"either delete some files or restore xp, so
Im assuming 1.7gig is still plenty of space.


If all else fails, is it possible for me to make a fourth partition on c: or d:
to put windows 98 on it ?
How much space do I need ?

 

Dos does not read USB unless you have some modified drivers, your best bet is to pull the HDD and image it on a pc outside of windows that has other HDD's avalible.

--ssx--

 

Dos can read USB, however DOS is very fickle about it.

First off, you are sure that you have no Boot from USB option? Assuming that is the case I don't think you can boot from USB.

If you find you do have a boot from USB option, unfortunately not all external hard drive enclosures are made equal, some will work just fine, others won't work at all, others will work SOMETIMES, I recently had to get a new 2.5" external hard drive enclosure because my prior one would not boot, the new one does, same drive in either, it's the chipsets (I believe).