Booting from external hardrive

N

n74tg

New Member
The girlfriends new computer (Compaq Presario, vista home edition) has a 250 gig sata hardrive. If she gets an external hardrive for backup can she boot from that external drive (assuming we used XXClone or similar to image (file to file - making it bootable) the primary drive).

Likewise, if we could boot from that external drive, can anyone see any reason why we couldn't clone the external drive back to a "new" internal drive (assuming of course that the internal had gone bad and been replaced).

Additional information: While I would like to install a second internal drive to clone too (rather than use an external), she is a technophobe, so opening up her precious new computer would cause her to go into a near seizure.
 
As long as the system supports booting from USB you should be able to do anything you could do if the drive was internal except it will be slower.
 
Without buying an external drive first, how could I find out if the system will support booting from a USB connected drive.
 
if you have a thumbdrive, plug that into the usb port with a version of Linux on it (Ubuntu or so) and see if it asks you to boot that prior to windows opening.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top