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General discussion

External Laptop Hard Drive

May 16, 2006 7:30AM PDT

I have a laptop that my company issued me, and a personal laptop. I travel alot and going through airport security is getting tiring with 2 laptops. I purchased an external hard drive that I figured I would just treat as my personal laptop for space reasons and to keep personal data off of the business one. My question is...Do I need to install an OS on the external one? If I don't, will personal info get mixed with the business registry etc? If I do install a OS on it, how do I boot to it? This should be a problem for many...has any one has done this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
-Jim

Discussion is locked

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External drives. . .
May 16, 2006 9:50AM PDT

won't boot to an OS.

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External Drives
May 16, 2006 11:49AM PDT

It will boot an OS, but it won't be easy. If you load a Linux OS on it you can boot with a floppy disk to the external drive. I have not done, this, but have read about people that have done it. Do a google search on it, and see what you come up with. If you want to stick with Windows, it won't boot to my knowledge.

Shane

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External Laptop Harddrive
May 31, 2006 2:15AM PDT

The best way to achieve 2 laptops in one is: Get a copy of Microsoft Virtual PC. This will allow you to make a copy of your other laptop with O/S and everthing and copy it to a VPC image. Using the VPC software loaded on your business laptop, you can access your VPC image and it will appear as if you are using your other laptop.