Is it possible to install Windows OS on external hard disk?
By lovedude
@lovedude (4447)
India
December 20, 2011 11:38pm CST
I was reading few articles of system troubleshoot.. In some of the cases OS doesn't boot so we had tried with external harddisk.. but When installation process starts, it says Destination drive you trying to install is network drive. you cannot install OS in network drive..
Has anyone tried this? any solution or trick to install Windows OS on External USB Hard disk?
4 responses
@smacksman (6053)
•
21 Dec 11
Microsoft would hate Windows being installed on a network. They want to sell a copy of Win for every terminal/computer!
External drives work from the USB port and so the USB ports would need to be activated by the BIOS to be able to boot from an external drive.
It is possible to boot from a DVD so maybe it could be configured to run from a DVD but who would want to use such a slow drive?
However, there are loads of utility programs that boot and run from DVD's for fault finding and fixing. I use Dave's Utilities, for instance, and it is very useful. You download an .ISO file and burn it to a DVD.
@smacksman (6053)
•
21 Dec 11
What I don't quite understand is why you would want to do it?
You can't move the external hard drive from computer to computer because at least the motherboard drivers for the chip set, sound and graphics will be different each time and maybe USB and other drivers too. Certainly WiFi and printer drivers will be different from PC to PC.
And as I said, Windows would run painfully slowly through a USB port even if it was USB 3.0
@lovedude (4447)
• India
22 Dec 11
I need to boot the actual hard disk.. so that I can put data recovery or something from my OS drive.. currently I am attaching those nonbootable hard disks to one of our working system and copy data from there.. If I can get it in external disk setup.. I just need to plug and play. it's ok if it takes hours to copy data from C: to D: drive..
@LifeOngoing (129)
• United States
23 Dec 11
Most of the people I know that did this installed to an internal hard drive then removed the internal drive from the desktop, placed it in the external usb hard disk enclosure then reconfigured where necessary. Your bios has to support booting from an external hard disk to use it though. I do not believe it is possible to install the OS to a network drive, only USB, and that is usually such a pain that people do it internally first. I'm a little confused about your question too. At the beginning you say external hard disk, but then later you mention installing to a network drive so I answered both. I hope this helps.
I had the same question in past. I got few good articles from internet too. But I never got success. I have hear that its possible. But never seen it. I mean from some friend or other. Well, if you got some trick then don't forget to pm me here...
@shskumbla (3338)
• India
21 Dec 11
I have not tried,but we can install any OS in external hard disk.(My friend says)
