Can Windows 7 boot from an external USB or FireWire drive? [duplicate]
Solution 1:
I have spent a few days looking around for a solution to this and also made an attempt to install Windows 7 on an external drive myself.
Long story short, the answer can be rounded down to "No, it is not possible to run Windows 7 from an external USB or FireWire drive".
The rounding error is a few guides employing hacks and workarounds and third-party tools with partial success.
Edit: Links to sites on the topic
Raymond Chen saying it isn't possible
Tom's hardware guide, 14-step process using BartPE and other tools
Another site using VMWare and a registry hack
Solution 2:
I've been looking into this for a few days, so I can save you a step here.
Installing onto a USB drive is not the problem. You can get an installed copy there via other means, but it won't help you, because:
"Windows 7 will not boot from a USB drive."
That's the official word from microsoft. Ignoring them, I have gotten it to the point where it shows some fancy logos, but then BSOD.
Apparently it is possible to bypass that, by modifying some driver files, and installing a service to keep the modified.
But just to be clear, INSTALLATION is not going to be your main problem.
Solution 3:
I've been researching this for the last week, and, from what I can tell, Windows has to install on a "fixed" disk. USB devices show up in Drive management as a "removable" disk.
Lexar has a utility that will flip the "removable" bit on a USB device, but so far I haven't been able to use their utility to flip the bit on any USB drive. I'm out to buy a Lexar drive to test this, but as of this post the answer is still "no, you can't install Windows 7 on a USB drive". Hopefully, this afternoon's testing will prove different.
Solution 4:
There is a hack I've used to boot Windows 7 from a FireWire drive. My PC can boot from FireWire, but I'm aware that not all PC's can.
System image backup your physical machine
Install Virtual Box
Create a virtual machine. Don't add any hard drives to the VM
Format the extrnal drive and make it bootable http://kmwoley.com/blog/?p=345
Set virtual box to access the physical external drive http://www.sysprobs.com/access-physical-disk-virtualbox-desktop-virtualization-software
Within the virtual box VM restore from backup. Windows sees the external drive as an internal drive. Reboot as needed for drivers etc. The key point here is that the drivers for your physical machine are maintained.
Power down physical machine and remove all internal drives
Boot physical machine from external drive