Operating System on an external hard drive

**TestudoAubreii** · June 16, 2007, 03:47 PM

Greetings,

I was just wondering; can you install an operating system on an external hard drive? It may like a silly question, but if I can I should also be able to intall games without it actually putting it on my internal hard drive. Could this be correct? Thank you in advance for any and all responses.

morrisonicus

**Publius Clodius Pulcher** · June 16, 2007, 10:16 PM

I'm pretty sure you can, you'd just have to switch the boot order in your BIOS to prioritize your external over your internal. I wouldn't advise it though, as It'll bottleneck your P.C. because of the USB 2.0 transfer time.

**sapi** · June 16, 2007, 10:53 PM

With something like eSata, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to use an external drive the same way you would an internal.

**Cyrus the Virus** · June 17, 2007, 04:04 AM

Originally Posted by morrisonicus

Greetings,

I was just wondering; can you install an operating system on an external hard drive? It may like a silly question, but if I can I should also be able to intall games without it actually putting it on my internal hard drive. Could this be correct? Thank you in advance for any and all responses.

morrisonicus

Just stay on with installing games on the external, OS I don't see why you would install it there.

**TestudoAubreii** · June 17, 2007, 09:38 AM

Thanks for the responses. I would love to only install the games on an external drive, but I thought that when you install games, they also install on your registry. This is why I thought that one would need to install the os on the same drive that you would install games. I gues what I am thinking is that if I have a 250 GB external hard drive, I can just install the games on that without taking up room on the internal HD, hopefully making it run faster. Let me know what you all think. Thanks for the help.

morrisonicus

**Niccolo Machiavelli** · June 21, 2007, 06:12 PM

Originally Posted by morrisonicus

Thanks for the responses. I would love to only install the games on an external drive, but I thought that when you install games, they also install on your registry. This is why I thought that one would need to install the os on the same drive that you would install games. I gues what I am thinking is that if I have a 250 GB external hard drive, I can just install the games on that without taking up room on the internal HD, hopefully making it run faster. Let me know what you all think. Thanks for the help.

morrisonicus

Mmmh - why would you want to do that? The Drive/partition you have your OS on has nothing to do with your games partition/drive. I personally use one partition for the OS, one for applications and one for games - the rest and all the external drives are for data storage only.

Although you can install games to any HD, I want especially those to load fast and as most external HD's are USB 2/firewire, I install them on a partition of my internal HD.

**General Sun** · June 17, 2007, 10:51 PM

The Registry will be written in such a way to search for the games on other drives, so you should have no problems.

**sapi** · June 18, 2007, 03:36 AM

In addition, the registery really isn't that important for games

**TestudoAubreii** · June 18, 2007, 11:36 AM

Thank you to all. I think I am going to just install my games on an external drive. Thanks again.

morrisonicus

**General Sun** · June 23, 2007, 06:14 PM

Originally Posted by sapi

In addition, the registery really isn't that important for games

Depends on the game...

**kshcshbash** · June 21, 2007, 01:34 PM

Just a quick update for anyone who has this question again:

If you're installing Linux GRUB or LILO _can_ deal with external hard drives. Add an entry in fstab; something to the tune of /dev/usb1. You'll figure it out.