Windows 7 on External HDD?

X

XF8X

New Member
Hi guys I recently just finished putting together my first computer build (Thx everyone who helped). Anyway, I installed an old IDE harddrive and a dvd drive which uses IDE. My motherboard only has one IDE port so I don't really have room for the HDD as my cable wont reach both the HDD and the DVD drive. I want to install Windows 7 to my portable harddrive which already has a partition on it which is blank. When I go to install Windows it says I cannot install it to USB devices. Is there any way around this?

Thx.
 
Windows doesn't install on usb devices very well. I've put windows xp on a flash drive but it was complicated and is really slow and you can't do much with it. I don't think you can do it with windows 7 but I can be wrong.
 
Open the external drive and stick the drive in your computer ;) That's about the only way. Well, you could technically do a virtual machine and have the image loaded on your external drive, but that'd be a large cut in performance plus you couldn't activate it (or if you did you couldn't later install it on your desktop.
 
NaughtyMonkey said:
Windows doesn't install on usb devices very well. .
Click to expand...

What about External HDD's using SATA. I'm reading the manual of a MOBO I'm looking at - and there is Card for external SATA drive. I'm assuming it would operate in much the same performance as an internal SATA HDD?

Yes?
 
Jamin43 said:
What about External HDD's using SATA. I'm reading the manual of a MOBO I'm looking at - and there is Card for external SATA drive. I'm assuming it would operate in much the same performance as an internal SATA HDD?

Yes?
Click to expand...



Well doing it that way, I have no idea. Its worth a try, or google it? did you try that?
 
An Esata drive is the same thing as an internal and you will have the same performance. And yes you can install an os on an esata drive.
 
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