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Operating system on a usb hard drive?

  • 01-01-2012 3:33am
    #1
    azureustigris
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13 ✭


    I was trying before to get my usb external hard drive bootable with windows 7 on it so i can use it as a hard drive for my computer, but im not having any luck with it, a guy i know told me that there is a microsoft tool for making the usb drive bootable to install windows on it.

    Anyone have any ideas on how to get windows installed onto the external hard drive?


Comments

  • #2
    demanufactured
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,756 ✭✭✭demanufactured


    One question
    Why would you want to install your operating system on an external drive.
    You dont need to make it bootable..the installation will do that.


  • #3
    azureustigris
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13 ✭azureustigris


    demanufactured wrote: »
    One question
    Why would you want to install your operating system on an external drive.
    You dont need to make it bootable..the installation will do that.

    because i dont have an internal hard drive nor the money to buy it at the moment, when i tried to install it simply through the disk when i was trying to install it kept coming up saying that it cant install on it.

    I have a laptop hard drive with windows on it but that blue screens when its in the computer and i try to boot that, any idea on that?


  • #4
    demanufactured
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,756 ✭✭✭demanufactured


    Format it and do a fresh install on it


  • #5
    dlofnep
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,759 ✭✭✭✭dlofnep


    Trying to run Windows from a USB drive will be sluggish as hell. Stick a bootable Linux ISO on it, and it will run as smooth as a baby. You can use this to do it: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/


  • #6
    azureustigris
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13 ✭azureustigris


    dlofnep wrote: »
    Trying to run Windows from a USB drive will be sluggish as hell. Stick a bootable Linux ISO on it, and it will run as smooth as a baby. You can use this to do it: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

    I would rather not use linux, but i might just try it anyway.


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  • #7
    Adyx
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,997 ✭✭✭Adyx


    azureustigris wrote: »
    because i dont have an internal hard drive nor the money to buy it at the moment, when i tried to install it simply through the disk when i was trying to install it kept coming up saying that it cant install on it.

    I have a laptop hard drive with windows on it but that blue screens when its in the computer and i try to boot that, any idea on that?
    Maye I'm missing something here but if you don't have an internal drive but do have an external one, why not put the external one into the computer? It'll probably solve your installation problems and it'll actually be useably fast.


  • #8
    Capt'n Midnight
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 93,563 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    You would need a windows license for the external drive.

    If you don't have a spare transferable license then game over.



    IIRC windows 7 is licensed per partition , so you would need two licenses if you if you installed it twice onto two different partitions on the same drive.

    windows is not designed to boot from external drive. simple as.
    you would have to trick it into never installing removable drive drivers otherwise it will keel over and blue screen. If you try it on another pc then it will realise the motherboard has change and probably keel over.



    Linux on the other hand will install happily to external drives and will boot up on just about anything. So if you had a spare license you could have a windows virtual machine running in linux on an external drive


    there are things like bartpe but again you need a license and even then the license may not cover it's use.


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