Installing Win7 to a USB external drive

[BrandonT]

I'm looking to install Win7 to an external USB hard drive, as a "portable OS" basically. I've done a search and there are several threads, all of which were hit or miss, and all from 2009. So what is currently the best (and easiest) method to do this?

BTW I don't want to do the VHD thing because you have to have that file on the computer's regular internal hard drive. I don't want anything that will leave a trace on the computer I run the portable OS on.

 

[corkyg]

Then you legally can't do it.

 

[BrandonT]

What do you mean legally? It's my computer and my (paid) copy of Windows.

 

[corkyg]

It cannot be legally activated on removable media. Activation ties it to one computer, period. You don't "own" your copy of Windows. The money you paid only entitles you to use it in accordance with the EULA.

Consider a Linux distro for that purpose.

 

[lxskllr]

Linux would be better for that task.

 

[JackMDS]

Windows installed OS can not start from a portable Drive, it is designed this way.

Since it is an intriguing option, many tried to "adjust" the code to No avail.

As Corkgy said it is against the EULA. So even if in theory some "genius will mange to hack the OS, it will be illegal.

In such case it does not matter that you bough it if, you do an act against the EULA it is illegal.

 

[BrandonT]

You guys just reminded me to re-up my donation to EFF.org.

Thanks for the help.

 

[yinan]

Try doing the vhd thing on removable media. I may be wrong, but with the advent of WindowsPE it has become a lot easier to make at least a bare bones version of Windows portable.

Also, look into making custom WindowsPE discs.

 

[Nothinman]

What do you mean legally? It's my computer and my (paid) copy of Windows.

I'm not sure of the licensing aspects, but I doubt it would work well at all because of the hardware differences in each machine. While Win7 is a lot better than previous versions of Windows in dealing with hardware changes you'll still run into driver issues and it probably wouldn't boot right on a lot of machines.

Linux would be infinitely better because it does fresh hardware detection at every boot in the initramfs, the only issue you may have is that the network interface name will change (i.e. eth1, eth2, etc) and if you install the non-free drivers from ATI or nVidia they may cause minor issues when booting on other hardware. Other than that it should just boot up and run normally from whatever media you want.

 

[BrandonT]

I'd only be using this one machine, so not worried about the hardware driver issue. I'll look into WindowPE, I assume it is like BartPE that I'm familiar with?

Does eSATA have the same limitation as USB?

 

[vailr]

Does eSATA have the same limitation as USB?

eSATA is identical to internal SATA, as far as any relevant operating system is concerned. May require some additional drivers, (such as from Intel or JMicron) if the eSATA port is set in the bios to AHCI mode.
Via modification of the Windows install disk, WinXP (and probably Windows 7 also) can be made to boot and run on an external USB 2.0 port. Although: a USB 3.0 port & external drive would be a faster alternative.