How do you install an OS on an external hard drive?

Answer 1

Drop the install disk for the OS you want to install into the CD drive and reboot the computer. It sometimes is not that simple. The previous answer only works if the BIOS has been set to read the CD-ROM drive before reading the hard drive. The boot routine in the BIOS (hardware chip) will boot from devices in the sequence that are set in the chip. Depending upon your computer, this sequence may be set to (1)floppy/hard drive (2)CD-ROM/hard drive (3)floppy/CD-ROM/hard drive, and so forth. You are responsible for setting this sequence if it is not satisfactory for your needs. Usually, as the machine is booting, for the first few seconds you will see a message on the screen such as, "Press to enter Setup" or "Press F5 to enter Setup" or some such message. Some less robust machines will give you no indication of what to do or when. If you have your computer hardware manual, it should tell you what key to use to enter Setup. If not, try rebooting BY TURNING THE MACHINE OFF AND THEN ON AGAIN and guessing at the the key by repeating it a single key 2 or 3 times a second during the boot process until the Setup menu comes up. The most popular keys that BIOS manufactuers use are , and , although I have seen some use the bar and the key. None will use the regular keyboard keys, such as letters, numbers or special characters. Once you are in Setup, different BIOS manufacturers have different panels to change their settings. Just follow the instructions. Some use the up-and-down arrows, some use the left-and-right arrows and some use the Tab key to move between fields. They will tell you on the screen. After you have made the changes to suit the sequence where you are booting from, MAKE SURE that you select the option at the end to SAVE your changes! Or you will have wasted your time. Conversely, if you think that you have screwed something up, just don't save it, and start over. At boot time, the computer will now look at the first device in the Setup table to see if the media on it has a boot record in front of it. This is called a bootable device. If it does, then it will boot from it. If it doesn't, then it will go to the next device in the table to try again. It will keep trying until it has exhausted all devices and then just stop with a beep-beep. If this happens, then you know that the BIOS is not set up correctly or yoy don't have bootable media in a drive in the Boot sequence. One word of caution, sometimes malicious hackers may have planted a worm on your hard drive. When you re-install the Operating System, MAKE SURE that you use the option to reformat your hard drive during the install. Some OS's will just do it; others will ask you so that your data can be saved. If you have data that needs restored, I recommend that you back it up to a floppy or other device before re-installing the OS and reload it later. Don't worry, viruses and worms cannot hide in data, only in executables. This might be more than you need if your boot sequence is already correct, but I have re-installed hundreds of OS's, and about a fourth of them have viruses or worms on them and another one fourth of them do not have correct boot sequences. You might be lucky on both counts. Good luck!

Answer 2

There are multiple methods to installing an Operating System on an external hard drive, but this is by far the easiest:

1. Install the Operating System on your desktop or laptop computer using your bootable medium, such as CD/DVD or USB device.

2. Once the Operating System is completely installed, boot into it, and access the partition where you installed it.

3. Drag and drop all of the files in the system partition onto your external hard drive, and wait for them to fully transfer.

4. Now you can plug your external hard drive into any computer, and boot into that Operating System.

Answer 3

Always use the original operating system cd that came with the laptop. When booting up after installing the hard drive you may have to set the boot sequence to cd drive before hard drive if not already. This can be done by hitting F5 usually when booting up.