
Quote: Originally Posted by
Antman
I hope the OP comes back to this. I am rather interested in the results. Only laziness/lethargy prevents me from trying it myself - but I am 100% certain this can be done. It is only logical.
I added an eSATA connection to my desktop via a SATA to eSATA cable directly from the motherboard to the backplate, plugged in my eSATA external HD, loaded Windows 7 on the external and never had a problem.
How would the motherboard 'know' it's not directly connected to the SATA port?
If there is an eSATA card, then maybe.
Worked for me.
My laptop has an eSATA port and I run the eSATA external HD the same way, but haven't actually ran an OS from the external HD on it. Should work, I do run a couple of programs from it.
Your BIOS must be set to SATA or RAID in order to hot swap.
It worked fine for hot plugging in, but no 'safely remove hardware' for unplugging. I use a program called 'Hot Swap' and now I can 'safely remove hardware'. It clears the cache and let's you know if you forgot to close something.
Windows 7 is on my internal HD now.
EDIT:
You can get information about your computer (and motherboard) from a couple different programs. I use SIW, it doesn't install on your operating system and you can run it when needed.
SIW can be found here
Hope this helps,