External USB Hard Drive

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Guest

Hi there

I am thinking of purchasing a USB external hard drive. Is it possible to
load an windows xp on one and move it from PC to PC. For example I could use
it as my hard drive at home, then take it to work and plug it into that PC as
the bootable device. If so does it reconfigure all the ports and hardware
devices each time. If this is not possible, can I intsall programs onto it
that I could run at home then at work. If so how, as there would be no
windows or windows\system directory?

Many thanks in advance.
 
msg said:
Hi there

I am thinking of purchasing a USB external hard drive. Is it possible to
load an windows xp on one and move it from PC to PC. For example I could use
it as my hard drive at home, then take it to work and plug it into that PC as
the bootable device. If so does it reconfigure all the ports and hardware
devices each time. If this is not possible, can I intsall programs onto it
that I could run at home then at work. If so how, as there would be no
windows or windows\system directory?

Many thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

My IT teacher formmatted a USB drive through Windows Setup accidently. So I
assume you can install it onto a USB drive. But the computers themselves have
to be able to boot from USB drives.
 
You can install windows xp on an external USB hard drive, but don't
expect to be able to easily move the drive from one machine to another.
It would definitely need to reconfigure all the hardware devices each
time you boot it up on a new machine - actually you will likely need to
do a repair install each time because it won't know how to handle the
new motherboard, video card, etc, etc.

Installing apps on it and running them on different machines likely
won't work either - if the application puts anything in the registry
(which is tied to the OS) it won't be installed on the USB drive, and
thus won't be around on the new machine. I imagine there are ways to
get around this, and some apps that would work, but probably more
trouble than its worth.

You're better off getting a laptop and carrying that back and forth!
 
Hi there

I am thinking of purchasing a USB external hard drive. Is it possible to
load an windows xp on one and move it from PC to PC. For example I could use
it as my hard drive at home, then take it to work and plug it into that PC as
the bootable device. If so does it reconfigure all the ports and hardware
devices each time. If this is not possible, can I intsall programs onto it
that I could run at home then at work. If so how, as there would be no
windows or windows\system directory?

Many thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

XP won't boot from a USB device, period.
 
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