Installing Vista on an external drive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Quilljar
  • Start date Start date
Q

Quilljar

Sorry if this has already been dealt with but I am a new lurker.
I have finally been sent my Vista from the voucher I was given with a new
computer last November.
I do not particularly wish to upgrade from XP, but I would like to
experiment with Vista. Is it possible just to install it on my external
200Gb hard disc and run it from there whenever i wish, while retaining WinXP
as my normal OS?
 
Hi Quilljar,

Simple answer: No. There are a number of reasons, but this is not a possible
scenario for you. You can either add a temporary drive to dual boot, or use
a partitioning program to carve out enough space on the existing drive to
create a separate volume to install Vista to.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com
 
Rick said:
Hi Quilljar,

Simple answer: No. There are a number of reasons, but this is not a
possible scenario for you. You can either add a temporary drive to
dual boot, or use a partitioning program to carve out enough space on
the existing drive to create a separate volume to install Vista to.
Click to expand...

Can my external drive be my temporary drive?
 
You can NOT install either Windows XP or Windows Vista to an external hard
drive!

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
* Quilljar:
Can my external drive be my temporary drive?
Click to expand...

Not an external USB drive.

Why don't you try VPC 2007?
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx

Using VPC, you run your Vista VHD (virtual hard drive) from your external drive
while your in XP. It will act like a totally separate OS, contained on a virtual
drive. Read up on it before you attempt it. It really isn't that hard.

The biggest drawback for you, the Vista version you have is
an upgrade version. So, you'd have to do a trick to get it to install
properly on the virtual machine. Of course, you can install it without the
key and play with it for 30 days, do the "slmgr -rearm" trick three times,
for a total of 120 days to see if you like it. Granted, it will be a bit slower
installed as a virtual machine, Aero won't work, but you can get a feeling
as to whether you might like it or not. Also, if you install into a virtual machine
without using your key and activating, you won't have to worry about phoning
in your activation when you go to install it permanently. If you use that key
now and activate, then the next time you'll be told that key is in use- that includes
virtual machines.


-Michael
 
Except for an external SCSI or SATA (eSATA). The limitation is more
of the disk being "Removable" than one of being outside the PC cabinet.
I use a AcomData external SATA drive and it does provide the ability
to be a "Bootable" device to both XP & Vista.
 
Correct. I believe Colin was the first to bring this
to my attention. It does work.

-Michael

* R. McCarty:
 
OK

Thanks for that. Now for the killer question, because this is why many
people want to do this.

If you connect the drive to another computer with different hardware, is it
still bootable? Likely NOT!

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
No it wouldn't be. For that kind of portability I'd use a VPC machine on
a 4-Gigabyte Flash drive. It's hardware is virtualized so it doesn't care or
matter what the Host machine's configuration is.
Trying to use USB drives to boot XP isn't realistic anyway. The average
throughput on USB (2.0) is still around 25-Megabytes about the same as
a UDMA mode 2 CD/DVD drive. You might get it work, but the overall
performance would be bad.
 
Back
Top