Should be no problem as long as the drive is set up and shows up on the desktop. I have an 8500 and regularly boot from the original IBM drive(drive setup init'd), a Seagate barracuda(FWB init'd), a hacked in Plextor CD-ROM, a Plextor CD-R, a Zip or a Jaz, no problem. All they need to be your start-up drive is a valid(blessed) system folder and be mounted. Then select the drive you want from "Start-up Disk" control panel.