Boot to an external hard drive

[karlos]

I'm thinking on buying a external hard drive of 1TB and 3.0 in order to install Windows on it but I don't know if it will work well. Have someone tried it?

[usbear]

I'm thinking on buying a external hard drive of 1TB and 3.0 in order to install Windows on it but I don't know if it will work well. Have someone tried it?

Hi karlos,

I have tested this on an external 1TB drive with both USB3.0 & eSata and it works very good.

Just remember Win8(+) supports native booting from USB3.0, but not Win7 - (it will crash on a usb3.0 port)

Win7 will still run, have to plug it into a usb2 port, but it will boot a lot slower.

[des421]

Windows 8.1 at least will run as well from USB 3.0 as SATA. Another most interesting fact is, a clone of an SATA installation will also run from USB (much easier than creating a separate Windows-To-Go/WinToUSB installation) with only "2" registry modifications to the USB installation. This is posted here. There's is a catch. I don't know "exactly" why it worked, only the conditions under which it did. Initially, using a copy of a long standing SATA installation the modified clone wouldn't start, with "configuration errors". Just after restoring the SATA installation from a disk image it then did. I.E., one of the many Windows settings/optimization parameters hadn't yet been established when the clone was made by copying the original at that time. I currently have 3 separate installations, the original, a clone of same, and a WinToUSB installation that run on the same hardware. Not wishing to fudge up the clone by updating it from the original and destroying whatever made it work in the first place, unfortunately all three are now updated separately by booting individually. Not the original intention. And causing me to look harder at disk images as installation redundancy. The free AOMEI Backupper can write an image of one of my 33+GB installations over the LAN to NAS in under 8 minutes making this option quite viable.

DES

[usbear]

Strange AMOEI Backupper did not successfully copy the wintousb installation, had to use HD Clone wihich works very good, maybe I did not use the correct copy settings.

[des421]

That Backupper is just plain finicky! It only works for me by assigning a task name and pointing it to the first directory level of my NAS, where it puts a file by the task name in a folder of the same name. Trying to modify what it does only prevents it from working. Yesterday after Windows 8.1 updates I didn't notice the computer clock was off by 2 time zones? The time zone had been set to Pacific (Seattle), which was 2 hours different than the router driving the NAS. And it wouldn't write a file from that computer? After finally noticing and setting the correct time zone on the computer it then worked fine again. You figure it out. I've only copied the WinToUSB installation while not running, just a disk copy, but it copies the running system disk fine, just slightly slower.

DES

[vagner]

des421 and usbear,

can tell me if I clone with Aomei Backupper my native system to the external HD will also work?

[usbear]

des421 and usbear,

can tell me if I clone with Aomei Backupper my native system to the external HD will also work?

Hi vagner,

I do not like Aomei Backupper, HD Clone has done for me what you have asked - very reliable.

[aronwanrer11]

The procedure you are explaining is goo to see. I also try this for my system but after that I faced Netgear Router Password Issues if anyone know how to solve it then please let me know about that.