Is it possible to put Windows 7 Ultimate on my WD External Hard-drive ?, When i try using Daemon Tools Lite I go as far as the install is asking where would i like to install at. I see the G:\ Drive for my WD External Hard-drive but it says I can’t install BC it’s a usb or IEEE…And my friends keep telling me that you can install Windows 7 Ultimate on an External Drive but idk I’m totally lost, Could i get some help plz ?..Thnx guys i really hope you respond and help me out here lol…
If you can do it, it’ll probably run slower than snot. But one thing you need to make sure of is that the USB device is set to be bootable. That’s done in your bios.
Any other recommendations, community.
So it would be a waste of time putting an OS on my WD External Hard drive then ?..wow that’s a waste of a product don’t you think…
It would be a waste of time putting an OS non most USB 2.0 external drives They aren’t intended to run an OS they are indended for storage. If you want an external to put an OS on something with E SATA would probably be better. I have put virtual PC drives on them and they are slow!
Joe
ratman wrote:
So it would be a waste of time putting an OS on my WD External Hard drive then ?..wow that’s a waste of a product don’t you think…
Well, most folks like their OS (with all the read/writes necessary) to be on a 90-120 MB/s drive as opposed to a 10-30 MB/s drive.
Any time your system needs anything, not just the initial boot, it’d be anywhere from 4 to 12 times slower than if installed on an internal drive… like Bill said, it’ll be slower than snot.
But, even if you want to bog your PC down like molasses in January, and your BIOS supports booting from USB devices, I’d still doubt the Win7 install CD will let you even choose the Passport Drive… it tends to get angry if you want to install on any kind of drive that requires drivers to be loaded in order to be accessed. It may work with newer MOBOs, but I’d really doubt very many people have bothered trying. I don’t remember my My Book Essentials drives attached to the PC coming up as a viable install partition when I was doing a clean install from the Win7 CD – I only recall it giving me the internal partitions.
But even beyond the speed issues, and whether it’s possible, it makes no real sense to have the OS on a removable drive… OSes aren’t meant to be removed while the system’s running. It’s not like it would be an “easy” way to have the same files and settings on 2 different computers, unless the 2 are identical, since each system would need different settings and drivers and registry keys… hooking the external up to a different PC and trying to boot it would probably just cause a BSOD.
And how do you shut the system down? The system can’t “safely remove” the drive while the system’s still using it (and the system will always be using it since that’s where the system files are), and shutting the PC down without safely removing the drive is a recipe for disaster – just look at all the posts around here of folks that have corrupted their drives.
I guess I don’t see why the OS can’t just be on an internal partition, and the removable used for things like backups or data storage.
