Is it possible to install the operating system in a portable hard drive

Installing Windows on a portable drive can be a very problematic and tricky task, and is hardly worthwhile for a temporary solution. You would be far better using Linux as a few other respondants have suggested, which is much easier and also far more reliable. I have Ubuntu booting from a flash drive, so an external drive will not present any issues at all. You may prefer Windows, but at least by using Ubuntu or a similar distribution you can operate the computer while waiting for a replacement. Furthermore, unless you are concerned about the data stored on your original hard drive then it would be simpler to replace it with a new drive.

yes it is possible, there are some steps into it though. use it as primary master, boot cd first then install. what errors? is the cd clean?

our hard drive was filled up, so we just bought an new hard drive for our computer. i think that what you should do as well. then make your old hard drive as the slave. dont think you can put os our portable hard drive.

You've come up with another of those questions that I had to turn to my computer guru husband to answer. He says that it really isn't possible to install an operating system on a harddrive that is external to the motherboard of the computer. It is just like some of the programs that we will install on our computers that require system files to operate and thus won't work on an external hard drive.

thanks to the new file systems is possible, also the new bioses are accepting booting from the usb devices. In fact there are already iso images ready to be recorded as portable usb OS specially on linux. but also some unattended versions of windows that includes already installed software like office and so on.

maybe your installer is corrupted or something like that.. try buying a new one.. or just try to install it again.. nowadays it's very complex where you want to put your OS, i've encountered putting OS on a flash drive and it works fine.. its very amazing with only a single stick of flash drive it does have a working Operating System..

Not with Windows. But I know that you can boot from a LiveCD of Linux (Ubuntu or Kubuntu). After Linux has loaded, you can actually access your harddisks even if they are Windows partition. Anyway, if you're not familiar or comfortable with Linux, you're out of luck.