Windows 7 - Install Windows 7 TO external drive?

I have a 20GB laptop HDD in an enclosure at the moment. I want to copy the Windows 7 setup files from the extracted ISO to that drive for installation. I did this with XP by using the following:

For the XP install I hooked up the drive via a usb-to-ide interface to another laptop and then ran that line from a command prompt and stepped through copying the needed setup files to the drive. From there I placed the HDD into the desired laptop (no working cd/dvd rom) and booted up into Windows setup. I do not believe this will work for 7 as there seems to be a directory structure difference to say the least. I wonder if that would still work had I the correct syntax though...

Is it possible to do this with Windows 7?
*The laptop is a DELL Inspiron 1100. The BIOS does not support booting from a USB device.

You cannot install Windows 7 to an external USB drive. Only if it has the IDE or SATA connectors will it work.

Since most external drives are laptop HDD's it is not that hard to connect to IDE or SATA.

it's an internal hdd connected to the desktop via an ide to usb interface...

the line in my original post placed the setup files on the drive so that when i placed it into the laptop and booted the laptop up it went straight into setup.

im not talking about installing the OS to the drive so i can just move it around. i don't have a working cd/dvd rom for this laptop...

You want to put setup files on that drive and use it to install FROM instead of of using a dvd drive?

I don't believe you will be able install onto it via usb - or boot it that way.

If you just want to get it set up - so installation will proceed when you put it back in the lappy and attach as internal drive - you need to have Vista or 7 installed on a pc you can access to do it this way:

Install Windows 7 FAST without a DVD or USB device

LOL. I assume that means you got it working?

That's usually a favorable response as noted. lol

Meh. :\ T'was a bump of hope. I would have posted the solution! I'm almost certain the line is the same I would just need to know the path and file to execute with the switches.

While we're at it, in 7 clearing IE's history no longer clears Windows Explorer's history. How does one go about clearing that?

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You know... I wonder if I just disabled my SATA drive and set the boot order of my desktop to CD-ROM, USB. If I had the 7 disc in the drive would setup see the HDD hooked up to the IDE/USB interface?

BAH! If I did the install that way then the OS would recognize my desktop's hardware and probably give me crap in the laptop. But what if the install were interrupted after the files were copied over... HMMMM

Are you not able to do it as per the tutorial link I posted ?

You could use PLOP - should be able to boot from usb with that.

http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html#features

PLOP...PlOP is all over the place. It is everywhere except what to do to get it to allow a pc to boot from USB. If there were step-by-step instructions that'd be great but I cannot seem to find anything like that on the site.

Install it as described. Select PLOP from the Windows boot menu. Plop Boot manager appears - select the option to boot from whatever device you want there - from memory, usb is the bottom one on PLOP screen.