Can you boot up your computer from an external hard drive?
By kingparker
@kingparker (9673)
United States
November 22, 2010 11:44am CST
Let's assume that your Desktop internal hard drive, the primary hard drive is burn out, not working any more. And you were unable to take it out from internally. Now, you only hope is through an external hard drive which has more saving space than an internal hard drive. Would it be possible to re - install your Windows 7 or other Windows operating system into this external hard drive, and has it to boot up the computer for later on? Can it be done?
3 responses
@Aussies2007 (5336)
• Australia
22 Nov 10
Only if you have the latest computer and you are using a SATA external drive.
USB external drives are too slow to support an operating system.
If you cannot take your old hard drive out, you will still need to disconnect it, or change it to "slave" in order to install an operating system on a new drive.
@kingparker (9673)
• United States
23 Nov 10
really? So, from my basic understanding, when I connected my external hard drive, or a usb flash drive without unplug it when I reboot my computer again. The operating system simply won't boot up. Why? I assume that the system falsely recognize the external or usb flash drive as the master already.
@Aussies2007 (5336)
• Australia
23 Nov 10
Nope, your computer will not recognize a USB drive as a master drive.
And if you don't disconnect your old drive
It will keep recognising the old drive as the master, since it is listed as C:
Unless you reformat it, and delete its partition.
@icehut (508)
•
22 Nov 10
If your motherboard supports it, you can set boot device priority for external USB storage higher than the internal harddisk. However, although it's possible to boot from the external harddisk, IIRC, Windows 7 installation won't detect the external harddisk as a device which Windows can be installed on.
