Can I start a computer without harddisk only by DVD/USB flash?

[pstein]

Assume I remove a hard disk from computer/notebook and put in a bootable DVD (with WinPE or Ubuntu) into DVD drive (or USB flash drive into USB flash port).

Can I start the whole computer in this scenario?

Or is a working hard disk required even if I boot the (Win 7 /Ubuntu) OS from DVD/USB flash?

Peter

 

[essenbe]

Yes, you can remove the hard drive and boot into a bootable DVD or USB. No problem.

 

[groze]

Assume I remove a hard disk from computer/notebook and put in a bootable DVD (with WinPE or Ubuntu) into DVD drive (or USB flash drive into USB flash port).

Can I start the whole computer in this scenario?

Or is a working hard disk required even if I boot the (Win 7 /Ubuntu) OS from DVD/USB flash?

Peter

Yes, you can remove the hard drive and boot into a bootable DVD or USB. No problem.

essenbe
Can you actually run windows 7 from a USB drive? if so, how? Wouldn't you need a big usb flash drive?

I know you can run most Ubuntu flavors from a usb drive or dvd drive.

One issue I did come across, is some flavors didn't write correctly to usb drive using Win32DiskImager-0.9.5-install from windows 7. So, I used rufus-2.2 from windows 7 for those that didn't work and so far rufus seems to work for most distros (Not all distros have been tested by me though)

 

[essenbe]

You can do most of them with Rufus. But, I don't know why you would want to run an OS from a Flash drive. It would be terribly slow and you will have problems with retaining what you install. The Live USBs are nice for a test drive or to use them for a specific purpose. But, using them for an every day OS, will be an unnecessary pain and terribly slow.