Need Help Booting Windows from an External USB Mirrored Drive

ocman47

Reputable
Mar 18, 2018
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Hi,

I am having troubles figuring out how to boot Windows from a Mirrored Drive. I have an External USB Drive with a Mirror Image of a Hard Drive. I want to boot from this External USB Drive. The Operating System is Windows 7.

Doing some research I apparently need to create a .ISO file. I did this using AOEMI Partition Assistant. I placed this file on the External USB Drive.

I also pressed F2 during a system re-start and went into the “Boot Sequence” Menu and made “USB Storage Device” the #1 option. However, the computer would not boot from the USB Drive.

How can I get this .ISO file to boot Windows 7 from my External USB Drive?

Do I need Windows Installation Disks? I don’t have them.

Do I need a Windows Installation Product Key? I don’t have one.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
 
Solution
Windows Vista and later will refuse to install to an external drive unless you are using an Enterprise version of Windows with the Windows-to-go feature. There are some third-party tools like WinToUSB that will let consumer versions of Windows do this. And earlier versions of Windows mostly just need the disk marked as not removable.

.iso files are not bootable. They are files that hold the image of a disc, and this disc may or may not be bootable. You have to burn or mount a bootable image.

Easiest to just remove the disk from your external enclosure and install it internally into the laptop. As you've found, a desktop is much better if you want to play with RAID.

ocman47

Reputable
Mar 18, 2018
17
0
4,520
My laptop keeps crashing and shutting down. I need to determine whether it is the hard drive that is near failure or something else. Running the laptop off the External USB Drive will tell me whether it is the Hard Drive that is the cause of the crashes or something else.

Also, if it turns out to be the Hard Drive, I need some way to transfer all my files to the new Hard Drive. And I would just repeat this process one more time to transfer the contents of the External USB Drive to the new Hard Drive.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator


OK, that's a whole different thing.

While it is sort of possible to create a bootable Windows OS on an external USB....you'd need to do it from the start.
A simple mirrored drive or just the ISO won't do it.

Since you're trying to diagnose hardware, instead of actually creating a fully bootable Windows OS...
A much easier way is to use a Linux Live CD or USB.

Create one, boot from that, and diagnose your hardware.
LinuxMint would be a good option.
 
Windows Vista and later will refuse to install to an external drive unless you are using an Enterprise version of Windows with the Windows-to-go feature. There are some third-party tools like WinToUSB that will let consumer versions of Windows do this. And earlier versions of Windows mostly just need the disk marked as not removable.

.iso files are not bootable. They are files that hold the image of a disc, and this disc may or may not be bootable. You have to burn or mount a bootable image.

Easiest to just remove the disk from your external enclosure and install it internally into the laptop. As you've found, a desktop is much better if you want to play with RAID.
 
Solution