external hard drive
 

wanting to put a os on a external hard drive, how would i go about doing so?

Hi,

if you are planning on booting from this drive and installing xp or vista, it will not work. Xp/vista both reinitalize the USB port during boot up, so at first it would work..then you'd get the blue screen (BSOD) because it couldnt/disconnected from the drive. if you google the issue, you may find some toolz that let you accomplish this another way, but in a general sense you cannot.

If your motherboard/bios allows booting from a usb device, then simply place this as the first boot device and install normally. If your mobo does not support it, then you cannot.

Well, it is possible to install an operating system on an external drive, like Will said, if it uses USB it is possible, but I wouldn't recommend using USB, since it won't be as fast as a regular hard drive.

So you can't really get the usual speed from that operating system. I'd say its best to put the operating system on a normal internal drive and keep all the files on the external one, since the operating system itself (if it is a fresh install) won't take all that much space.

yeah, i agree with that, but from experience with a motherboard that does boot from USB, xp/vista doesnt tend to like the fact that you did, plus its not practical as you have said so install the OS on an internal, then copy all files or install all programs using the D:\, E:\, ,or F:\ depending on your configuration.

I agree, but i answered the is it possible, lol
If you disconnect the drive, and you are using usb for your OS, the boot.ini, and MBR will be located on this drive, thus you will not be able to boot without it, even if there is another OS on a normal drive. It may be possible to arrange 2 MBRs, but this is dangerous and tricky business.

It is entirely possible to have an operating system on an external hard drive, and whilst performance won't be spectacular as already mentioned here, it is far from sluggish if you utilise a high-speed interface such as USB 2. Of course you will need to have a BIOS that will boot from a USB device, but most do these days in all fairness.

Your best bet is to still have an internal drive with an operating system on it. That way, you can set up a dual boot scenario so it is not essential that you have the external drive present in order to use the machine.

It's not an entirely elegant solution but if you have a good reason to install an OS on an external hard drive, there is no reason why you cannot.