USB Boot question

I have a question, my Dell XPS M1530 has a broken hard drive. It makes a clicking noise when it starts up and and a black screen appears which reads no bootable devices found and internal hard disk drive not found.
I have booted it up several times and the error message pops up every time
I have read online that you can boot up with a SSD or a flash drive, but i have a question, how big does an external hard drive need to be to use as a boot drive?
and can i use a boot configuration from another computer on this computer? the other computer is a different make
thanks

both laptops are windows 7, i forgot to mention

Hi Tommy and welcome to SevenForums,
I believe when you say SSD, you are referring to a USB Hard Drive?

You should used a fixed disk such as a standard hard drive or SSD drive rather than an external source to run as your main operating system drive.

There are bootable operating systems such as:

• Hirens Boot CD (has mini xp mode) - Download Hiren?s BootCD 15.2 | HBCD Fan & Discussion Platform
• Linux live CD - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD

These tools should only be used to troubleshoot an issue or access the data on your hard drive if the PC doesn't boot.

The clicking noise is the main issue, it sounds like your hard drive is broken and needs replacing, you can pick up hard drives fairly cheap (£25-30), if it's under warranty i would go down that route first.

Regards,
Jamie

Yeah, this is an external hard drive and not meant for running an operating system.

When did the clicking start on the laptop?
Was is dropped or knocked or anything?

I wouldn't recommend that to be honest.
The best solution in my opinion would be to buy a new 2.5" Sata Drive.

There are 2 things we need to look at in this case.
1. Try to recover any data you may have on the broken hard disk (I can help with this)
2. Re-install Windows 7 on the new hard drive (I don't know OEM rules too much, most of my experience is with volume licensing at work so i will ask other for help on this point)

Regards,
Jamie

Thai may help you and tell you everything you need to know. Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7