Booting From and external harddrive

Ok, I almost have my install finished but when I went to install WinXp on my Maxtor External Hard drive it wouldn't find it. When hooked up to my ide on the motherboard, it works fine. I can boot to my hard drive when connected to ide but not when its connected to the usb. It reboots my computer right after the WinXp logo loads, then it asks for me to run in safe mode, last know configuration and all that stuff, then does it agin. I have a Epia 10000. Any one have any suggestions on what to do. Should I just leave it connected as ide.

Personally, I would have a small 2.5" hard disk as the master hooked up to IDE and the larger external hard disk would then be purely for data. However, maybe if you go into advanced BIOS features and enable 'Boot other device' it will work?

No luck, I'll just hook it up to the ide on the board. Thanx any-way :D