Question about external hard drive's capability???

[WWSummers23]

Hi, currently i'm building a gaming pc and i was trying to think of ways to save a little bit of money so i came up with a thought: Could my Toshiba Canvio 500 GB external hard drive i have laying around act as a boot drive for my new gaming pc instead of going out and picking up an ssd for a boot drive?

 

[phil22]

Technically possible if your PC BIOS supports USB booting, but not recommended because even USB 3.0 is slower than SATA II or SATA III read speed. You would have enough time to re-tile your roof while Windows was loading from it.

Okay for temporary use as a boot drive but not satisfactory for regular use.

 

[unksol]

windows 7 wont even work on USB drives without a lot of registry hacking. Its designed not to install on external drives. You can however just take the drive out of the case and use it like any normal internal drive.