I know this is an ongoing horror story and I've been reading threads
about it for an hour now. I still can't seem to find the answer.

Can anyone give me specific model numbers of which drives (USB,
PCMCIA, whatever) will boot the Toshiba Portege 3500 and bring up the
recovery disk? I've had my tabletpc for about a year and the O/S
*really* needs to be reinstalled (and Toshiba tech support informs me
that I'll be charged for that, even though the system occasionally
freezes).

I do understand the issue with it not booting from USB, but some
people allege to be able to. I'm just trying to find out what specific
models they used.

Conversely, if you used a PC card drive *other* than the one Toshiba
sells, I wouldn't mind the details there either.

Ideally I would like to go buy something at Best Buy or CompUSA rather
than have to order the external drive online.

Thanks in advance.