Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Installing Windows 7 on a USB drive

Installing Windows 7 on a USB drive (not install FROM usb but install TO usb) can be useful in some situations. Information on this process is very hard to find on the internet. Information can be found here:

http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-install-windows-7-to-usb-external-hard-drive-must-read/comment-page-8/#comment-24770

However, after shutdown, attempting to boot from the USB drive gave the error "BOOTMGR is missing". Steps to fix these errors can be found here:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/fixing-bootmgr-is-missing-error-while-trying-to-boot-windows-vista/

Marking the C: drive on the USB disk as active, and then running "bootrec /fixboot" from the Windows 7 DVD made the installation work.

4 comments:

  1. What's USB3? I've only heard of USB 2.0 and 1.1, did they already come out with a new standard? (in ref to FB)

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  2. USB3.0 is the new standard been out for a few months now. Also whats up neil?

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  3. Hey guys. Yea, USB3 is new(a lot of motherboards dont fully support it yet). USB3 reads faster but writes slower than eSATA. The fact that its backwards compatible, though, makes it better for my uses.

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