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Question

Hard drive

Aug 30, 2016 8:08AM PDT

I have a computer without hard drive (it went bad) and i like to find out if i can use my external drive instead. Can i hook up external drive by usb and install operating system on it. And if yes, which operating system would you recommend.
Thank you.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Almost 99% of the time it's no.
Aug 30, 2016 8:40AM PDT

Here, a lot of folk run Windows and it's not going to run from USB without a lot of modification.

Then we have Linux. Linux can run from some 4 to 32GB memory stick (10 buck thing) so if you can use that, why not?

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Unbutu
Aug 30, 2016 8:50AM PDT

Thanks for the answer. What about Unbutu? Can I install it on external drive and boot into it?

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Yes, I believe any linux distro should work but...
Aug 30, 2016 9:57AM PDT

not MS windows though.

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Sure.
Aug 30, 2016 10:05AM PDT

It's been done so many times that the only thing that stops folk is doing it. Or the machine doesn't support USB boot. I have a few machines from 2008 and prior that can't boot USB.

I find the 4 to 32GB ten dollar memory stick to be a better idea as it can be small, faster than the HDD and let me use the laptop as a laptop. (portable.)

Picture follows of it in the laptop.

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Yeah you are right.
Aug 30, 2016 1:17PM PDT

I completely forgot about the old day... none USB boot bios.