Can I boot two different computers from the same drive? (not at the same time)

[suprises]

(I wasn't sure about which category to put this in, so if its wrong I apologize.)
So in the current way that I live my life, I have two different places that I live, and I need to switch between these places quite often. As of right now I just bring my laptop back and forth. The problem with just having this laptop and bringing it with me is that I want a nice desktop that I can game better on. My laptop games fine, it has a dedicated Graphics Card that performs nice, and a quad core i7 processor with hyper-threading that meets my needs for a mobile workstation with decent gaming capability. I have thought about maybe building a Mini ITX to bring with me, but that still sounds too cumbersome when I think about moving the keyboard, mouse, both monitors, etc... I had the greatest idea the other day, what if I just build two PCs (one for each place I live), bring just the drive with me, and boot from that one drive on both machines? I couldn't really see any flaws with this idea, but I have a hard time thinking about how these sorts of things work out, so I'm posting this to see if anyone sees an issue with this idea. If it will work, could someone tell me my limitations with this? Would the hardware of the two machines be able to be different, and if so how different can they be? Any feedback is appreciated and will be considered.

(I explained my situation in way too much depth, oh well.)

 

[burritobob]

I did some googling and came up with this

TLDR; No that really won't work.

 

[ronintexas]

If the computers have different hardware - it won't work. Plus, you need two licenses of Windows to get it done as well....

 

[suprises]

If I build both PCs with the exact same hardware and buy two copies of windows would it work? (man this is getting expensive )

 

[burritobob]

If I build both PCs with the exact same hardware and buy two copies of windows would it work? (man this is getting expensive )

You should just build it with two different drives, it will make your life a lot easier, I doubt you could get the same hardware, and even then why bother, just hook up a monitor to your laptop and breakout the good old mouse and keyboard and you'd be good to go.

 

[suprises]

You should just build it with two different drives, it will make your life a lot easier, I doubt you could get the same hardware, and even then why bother, just hook up a monitor to your laptop and breakout the good old mouse and keyboard and you'd be good to go.

The goal here is to have a powerful desktop that I dont have to lug around. I'm trying to make it more convenient by having all my files, programs, settings, games, etc... exactly the same on each system by using the same drive. Your idea with just using my laptop like its a desktop by using desktop peripherals is actually not a bad idea. If I were to do that I would want to invest in a top performance laptop so it performs like a desktop as well as feels like one.
I appreciate your input.

 

[ZandaThebigbluePanda]

You should just build it with two different drives, it will make your life a lot easier, I doubt you could get the same hardware, and even then why bother, just hook up a monitor to your laptop and breakout the good old mouse and keyboard and you'd be good to go.

The goal here is to have a powerful desktop that I dont have to lug around. I'm trying to make it more convenient by having all my files, programs, settings, games, etc... exactly the same on each system by using the same drive. Your idea with just using my laptop like its a desktop by using desktop peripherals is actually not a bad idea. If I were to do that I would want to invest in a top performance laptop so it performs like a desktop as well as feels like one.
I appreciate your input.

this is exactly what I do. using a gaming laptop because these "work station" laptops tend to come with really shitty GPU's

 

[suprises]

I did some research, and I found that typically laptops with the performance I want cost more than double what it would cost to build two identical desktops with about the same performance as the laptop equivalent. I also thought about it further, and if I build two desktops it would save even more money in the long run because I can upgrade desktops more freely than I can a laptop. I purchased my laptop not too long ago, when it was top of the line and now I find myself turning all the settings way down on newer games. The GTX 460M doesn't cut it anymore, and I don't want to buy a super expensive laptop, have the GPU go outdated and find myself turning down the settings again because I can't upgrade the hardware any further. (I know that there are laptops with MXM GPUs that can be removed from a socket and swapped, but buying new MXM cards is a terrible price/ performance.)

 

[ccampy]

Perhaps just Easyer to copy files ect to a external drive and move that between the computer's

 

[suprises]

Nobody has answered this question yet, if the hardware is all the same, and I buy two copies of windows can I make it work?

 

[tiny voices]

No, it will have all kinds of issues. Having the same parts in each computer makes no difference because they drive will still see them as two different PC's no matter what.

 

[jsmithepa]

U can have the exact hardware spec, same cpu, same ram blah-blah, but CPU would have a different IDentifier, LAN port would have a different MAC address etc. Windows will KNOW it's running on a different machine. So ur S.O.L.

 

[tiny voices]

^EXACTLY. Very well put.

 

[suprises]

No, it will have all kinds of issues. Having the same parts in each computer makes no difference because they drive will still see them as two different PC's no matter what.

U can have the exact hardware spec, same cpu, same ram blah-blah, but CPU would have a different IDentifier, LAN port would have a different MAC address etc. Windows will KNOW it's running on a different machine. So ur S.O.L.

Thats really too bad, I thought it would work but I wasn't sure so I'm glad I checked here before I spent a bunch of money. I appreciate the help, I will have to find some other way to have a nice desktop that I can have in both places. Maybe I should go for a Mini ITX and just carry that back and forth.

 

[tiny voices]

I would build a mini ITX or a microATX build in a case with a handle and just buy 2 monitors.

 

[suprises]

I would build a mini ITX or a microATX build in a case with a handle and just buy 2 monitors.

Looks like that's my best option
This case looks like it will get the job done: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811156324

 

[ronintexas]

You can install a second internal drive - and put your programs/games on it. You can then take that 2nd drive and go to the 2nd computer and install it as the 2nd drive. You will probably have to reinstall the games/programs you use, but then it should work on both computers.