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Anyone Good With Computers?


The Lord Bastard

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I am looking for a way to boot Windows 10 from a portable hard drive.

The reason for this is because my netbook doesn't have that much disk space, and it'd annoying me. My external, though, has 1000GB. Basically I'm looking to make the hard drive my primary hard drive and not the built-in hard drive on my netbook. Assuming this is possible?

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Why do you want to move the operating system? That's normally the last thing you'd want on an external drive. Why don't you just move all your data to the external drive? That way your netbook is still functional on its own. Is the internal drive a spinning disk or flash? If it's the latter then moving the OS to the external drive could make the computer slower, too.

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Yes, it's possible and very easy, I installed windows 8.1 on a portable hard disk because I'm a linux user and I don't need a permanent installation of Windows on my laptop (I only use windows to occasionally play DirectX games)

you need a good portable hard disk (usb 2.0 worked well for me) and follow the instructions of this tutorial :

http://lifehacker.com/how-to-run-a-portable-version-of-windows-from-a-usb-dri-1565509124

it's a tutorial for windows 8 but do the same steps for windows 10 (WinToUsb can install Windows 10/8.1/8/7 on external hard disks)

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9 hours ago, Loge said:

Why do you want to move the operating system? That's normally the last thing you'd want on an external drive. Why don't you just move all your data to the external drive? That way your netbook is still functional on its own. Is the internal drive a spinning disk or flash? If it's the latter then moving the OS to the external drive could make the computer slower, too.

The internal hard drive is 30GB and the WINDOWS folder that contains all the vital files accounts for around 45% of the disk space. I never have more than 2 GB of free space to play around with. If my OS was on the external hard drive I wouldn't have this problem. 

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3 hours ago, The Lord Bastard said:

The internal hard drive is 30GB and the WINDOWS folder that contains all the vital files accounts for around 45% of the disk space. I never have more than 2 GB of free space to play around with. If my OS was on the external hard drive I wouldn't have this problem. 

No.  But you'd likely have a bunch of other problems.

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3 hours ago, The Lord Bastard said:

I never have more than 2 GB of free space to play around with.

Why is that a problem when you have a terabyte to play around with on the always-attached external drive? What are you wanting to put on the internal drive that won't fit?

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13 hours ago, felice said:

Why is that a problem when you have a terabyte to play around with on the always-attached external drive? What are you wanting to put on the internal drive that won't fit?

I guess he has his home folder on the internal hard drive and applications put files there by default. That's what he really needs to change. Not sure how to do that in Windows but it can't be hard and is definitely better than moving the OS.

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13 hours ago, felice said:

Why is that a problem when you have a terabyte to play around with on the always-attached external drive? What are you wanting to put on the internal drive that won't fit?

I know what you are saying but I don't have a good answer. My internal hard drive is 30GB and I don't actually have much stored on it. The only programs I have are chrome, shockwave player and a free alternative to Microsoft office. I have no music, no videos, no photographs...hardly anything at all. According to a check I did, most of the space is taken up by the WINDOWS folder. 

There are other things installed on the system as well that must be taking up quite a bit of room and I'm not sure I can delete them. HP (manufacturer) applications that came pre-installed, hardware drivers and windows updates. 

It seems I need nigh on 30GB just to have a computer.

Someone made the suggestion that I should revert to WINDOWS 8. 

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30 GB just isn't very much these days. Have you thought about a hardware upgrade? If a new computer isn't an option you should think about replacing the hard drive at least. As for switching to another operating system: given your usage pattern you should consider Linux. Lots of distributions out there. I'm sure a sufficiently lean one can be found. Of course hardware support isn't always perfect, especially with laptops. 

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