Installing Windows Seven on another comps. HD

[mck567]

Basically I have a computer w/o a dvd player that I want to install windows 7 on. I figured I would take out the HD put it into a portable adapter I have and just install 7 from my other comp.

The only thing that's stopping me is the thought that the installation machine will think that 7 is "a part of it" and it will have a dual boot screen even after I remove the portable HD and put it back in the original computer.

Basically will my original machine dual boot if I install Windows 7 on a portable HD? I don't want it to...

 

[Brink]

Hello Mick, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Sorry, but you will not be able to install Windows 7 on a removable drive.

You could create a Windows 7 installation USB flash key drive to install from to your computer instead though. See the related links in the tutorial for other options to use to install Windows from as well.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[zx81]

Welcome to the Windows Seven Forum!

You could try a more easy method, using a usb memory stick to install Windows 7.
http://www.sevenforums.com/installation-setup/1607-how-install-windows-7-usb-stick.html

Best regards,

zx81

 

[Dave76]

Hello Brink,
I think it's possible to install an OS on a eSATA external HD.
My first Win7 was on mine.


mck567,

Welcome to Seven Forums.

The USB memory key works great for installations, and it's very fast.
Brinks tutorial is easy to follow and takes a couple of minutes to complete.

If your extrnal HD is USB you won't be able to install an OS on it.
If you did this while connected to another computer it will setup a dual boot configuration. If you have XP installed, it's difficult to change back to single boot.

You can expand the ISO file to a non-target partition, then find it and click the setup.exe file. To install a true clean installation you would have to boot to a non windows OS like a boot USB (put a boot CD program on a USB key).

Install Windows 7 Without Using Any External Device

Let us know if you have any questions.

 

[Brink]

Interesting Dave. I guess it may have considered it an internal drive if the external eSATA connector was connected via a internal SATA port??

 

[Dave76]

That's right,

No port controller card, just cable from SATA port to back plate. Which has a change over to the eSATA connection.

Might be different if there's a card.

 

[misterbk]

You can run into trouble swapping hard drives during install that way. During the install, Windows Setup detects and installs the correct Hardware Abstraction Layer, which is what everything rides on for using the hardware in your PC. If you swap machines, you can get really oddball problems like a computer with four cores and USB 2.0 only seeing a single-core with USB 1.0.

That happened to a whole lab full of workstations when one of the IT guys, none the wiser, tried creating the install image using an AMD machine and putting it on Intel machines.

My recommendation if you can't figure out the USB stick thing, is to use a USB DVD drive. Seems like you'll probably have occasional need for that anyway, since a lot of software comes on disks. You can get one on the cheap using a 5.25" external enclosure and a nice cheap DVD drive. Could probably pull it off for under $40 even if you use new components. Less if you hit up a "computer graveyard" chop-shop type place.

If you get really ghetto with it, any USB-to-SATA bridge (the little board in an external enclosure) will work, you just might have to unscrew it from the enclosure so you can fit the connector into the DVD drive. Plug in the power and USB and go.