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First thing: I am not asking what software I'm supposed to use. I already know the answer: Ghost (proprietary), Clonezilla, and dd (if I'm careful).

What I really want to know is if it is possible to (essentially) bit-for-bit clone my entire installation (OS, installed software, activation(s), etc.) to an external USB hard-drive, and then boot off of that (if I need to, I know how to edit BIOS settings and use Plop boot manager), and work with it day-to-day as if there was virtually no difference from using my internal HDD now.

Again, I'm not asking how to install Windows to an external (because I know I'd need to do some special workaround), I'm asking if I can clone everything and boot off of it.

In case you're wondering why I'm going to this trouble: I'm using a Lenovo Essentials laptop that has an unmodifiable partition table (due to recovery crap), and has all 4 of its partitions spoken for (3 primary, one extended, cannot change the extended). Anyway, my thought is that if I can clone everything and boot off of it when I need to, and just have a Linux distro on the internal HDD, then that could work.

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  • Good question, I've been meaning to test this myself but have been busy with a computer that wont post, I would think so, at least for linux it would be no problem as it's built to run off anything, as for windows, might work, might need to run startup repair on first boot because if there are any other drives connected it might possible see the drive as a different letter, best to use dd to make sure you get a clean exact copy.
    – user88311
    Jun 27, 2013 at 13:41
  • Are you asking about cloning Windows to an external HDD and booting directly from the drive when it's connected via USB? Windows won't ordinarily run from a USB drive.
    – Karan
    Jun 27, 2013 at 15:38
  • Having linux on the external drive is the smarter option, more or less.
    – Journeyman Geek
    Nov 22, 2013 at 0:17
  • What about if you clone to the USB drive then move the USB drive out of its case and then mount it internally would that work
    – Scott
    Jun 7, 2017 at 15:15

5 Answers 5

1

If you force windows to recognise the USB hard drive as a non-removable hard drive, then there shouldn't be any issues. How you would do that I'm not too sure as I haven't done this before, but this page may be of help -
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff541144%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

Theoretically, you would set the registry key, clone the hard drive, and then hopefully the registry key that you set would let windows boot off the now non-removable hard drive (even though it's actually a USB hard drive)

1
  • Did anyone ever try this to see if it actually worked..?
    – ETL
    Sep 27, 2023 at 19:38
2

Yes you can, I use drive clone 9. Then after clone is done change your boot option in bios to boot to the cloned usb HDD ,just to check if the clone was created correctly.

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  • Will this work if the your booting off of a flash drive with cloned hard drive on it? (I'm in the same situation and my hard drive is very small [drive capacity = 40gb; used space=22gb; flash drive=30gb]). The new computer has a sata hard drive in it (80gb) and I'll want to move the contents of the flash drive to the sata hard drive, is that possible?
    – www139
    Jun 22, 2015 at 2:16
0

Yes, you can. Specifically, this is known disk imaging, and is used all the time in the enterprise world for managing fleets of laptops or systems used by employees. It works for OS X, Windows, Linux, BSD, Solaris, and should work for any other OS.

Special preparations have to be made if you plan to move some OSes to a different system, but if you're just going to clone the internal drive and boot the same system off of the clone, you'll be fine!

3
  • So you're saying a cloned copy of Windows will boot from and run off an external USB drive?
    – Karan
    Jun 27, 2013 at 15:40
  • @Karan I've not tested, but I would expect it to. I would not expect that you can take it to another computer and boot it there, though, as that would deactivate Windows. I know you can image it from one internal harddrive to another just fine. If Windows doesn't boot from a USB external because it's USB, then that's an issue involving booting Windows over USB, not imaging Windows. Jun 27, 2013 at 16:14
  • 2
    That last bit is what I'm focusing on. Windows normally refuses to boot from USB, and booting is an integral part of the question along with cloning.
    – Karan
    Jun 27, 2013 at 17:32
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Personally you can but I would start fresh for best results if something were to go wrong at any given time. I have done it before from fresh anyway as post and booting to OS was easy and hassle free if you set the bios to start from external devices, and plus your bios has to support it. So if you choose to do any other good luck because there is always a chance to lose a *.dll file that halts your best efforts.

-1

My answer is no. However, I'm new at this. My evidence is that I just tried it and could not get Windows 7 to boot from the external USB Hard Drive. I had previously cloned an internal SATA drive (using Clonezilla) and that worked fine. Doing the exact same process, I cloned the external HD. After changing BIOS to boot from it, it would start windows, hang up, then go into Windows repair. Going through startup repair did not help, since the external drive's Windows OS wasn't being recognized.

In my case, I was just testing the ability to clone to an external HD because I plan to use it to make other machines. So, hopefully that will still work. Unfortunately, I don't have another machine with me right now to test, but I will later this week.

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  • 1
    Welcome to Super User! This is really a comment and not an answer to the original question. To critique or request clarification from an author, leave a comment below their post - you can always comment on your own posts, and once you have sufficient reputation you will be able to comment on any post. Please read Why do I need 50 reputation to comment? What can I do instead?
    – DavidPostill
    Jul 27, 2016 at 17:34
  • It's usually best to copy/clone from the original source if possible. Cloning from a clone can lead to issues...
    – user446730
    Aug 8, 2017 at 10:24

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