RUN WINDOWS FROM EXTERNAL DRIVES (portables)

Is it possible to run Windows from an external (portable) drive? YES!


Needless to say, this is extremely powerful and useful.


Imagine that you can have your studio computer right in your pants or shirt pocket. In a family oriented situation where everyone is using the same computer, you will not need to worry about risks to your hard work.

HOW ITS DONE

First of all, I've done this myself...I have one system in my local computer and another system in my external drive. We can even run Windows from SD memory cards (as well as the micro-SD cards or even mobile phones). Windows will however run better on normal physical external drives (as opposed to flash/memory drives). Additionally using a USB 3 rated port is helpful in terms of transfer data speed.


What You'll Need:

1. A Bootable Copy of Windows in an ISO file format
2. WinToUSB application

The magic is done via WinToUSB. It will copy the data from your bootable Windows version onto the external device. Once the installation process is complete you essentially setup your bios to boot from your external drive (typically done via a quick access key). The setup routine will continue from there and viola...you have Windows running from an external drive.

CAUTION

When doing this make sure you do not touch the drive cord which is connected to the USB port...some systems have loose connections and you don't want something to go wrong. As long as you are careful Windows will run EXACTLY the same way it does from your local drive...after all...a drive is a drive. You can go online, do updates and so forth.

At one time I had Windows 7 on my local drive and Windows 8 on my external drive. I also had Windows 7 on a flash drive...all worked perfectly fine except that flash drives are slower.

I thought this might be helpful to some out there.

 

How is this transferable to another machine though? Surely another computer would require specific motherboard drivers etc?

 

Yes, supersharpshooter, I was just going to say "so what's the purpose of this?", since when Windows are installed for a particular computer then it's really hard to make it work with another. Even worse with post XP Windows. Not to mention that the Windows authorisation lists the hardware it was installed on, so you have to authorise it again for a different computer. The only purpose is to have multiple Windows on one and the same computer. That is, it's great for when you want to experiment with some newer, or just different, version of Windows and don't want to erase your old Windows. I guess that's why you posted this.

I'm pretty sure I need only one installation of Windows, though... There's really no need for more versions of them. However they might come in handy if you work as a computer support guy and your clients use multiple versions of Windows. That's one of the reasons I still have XP x86 [that I'm still really fond of for making music] on my main computer and Windows 7 x64 on the laptop because my clients use both of these. *yes*

Having said that, I'm sure some people will find this really useful.

 

Using an external drive with Windows installed to run from it on another system I did not mention because its obvious there will be driver/hardware issues. I believe if I am not mistaken Windows will still run off of essential drivers anyway...after all when one installs Windows first hand one still has to install proper drivers for specific components...Windows will still work on that initial installation.

This scheme is highly useful and I have absolutely no problems with it. It also is a good idea in the event one's system fails...one will still be able to boot up from the external drive thereby having a chance at saving probable lost data. Another use is for testing...this I prefer as a software test environment over installing a virtual system on my main system.

In any event...to each his own.

 

If you have xp installed first, 7+ dont like that, mbr or whatever, you must put 7 first then xp as 2nd boot option, but then you cant use boot.ini to easily (with text editor) edit boot options. So this info nice for me, i still have xp and xp 64 dual boot and combined still smaller footprint than 7.