External as main hd

[Madirish79]

Can I have my whole computer running off the external drive

 

[getochkn]

a lot of OS's won't boot off an external, I think win 8 does, but why, the speed would be so slow compared to the drive being internal.

 

[DSzymborski]

You can, but not in the sense of "realistic alternative that's a good idea" but more along the lines of "can I drive my car into the neighbor's swimming pool?"

 

[pauls3743]

Personally, I would look at either an internal drive or running a virtual machine, my preference would either be Microsoft virtual pc or Sun's virtual box.

Theoritically, what you're asking could be done with eSATA, I wouldn't even touch it with usb because it would be so slow.

EDIT: I am recommending that you run from internal drives, this includes any virtual machines you may have.

 

[USAFRet]

Windows
Short answer - No

Long answer - Possibly, but do not do this
Windows 8 Enterprise (which you do not have and cannot buy) can do it. Look up Win2Go.
Any recent regular Windows install can probably be made to do it, after a crapload of trial and error faffing about with registry entries, etc.

Even if you get it to actually 'work', it will be glacially slow.

Linux
Short answer - Yes

Long answer - Yes, but it will be slow.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, you can run everything from your external hard drive. But, it is not so safe and fast as an internal hard drive.

And you've done this with a recent Windows OS? The process was easy and fast? As simple as selecting the "E" drive (external) as the target during the install?

Really?