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On my laptop I have an external SATA drive.

I was wondering if:

A) can you boot from an external SATA HDD

B) If so, you could have multiple SATA HDD's with different features (i.e. one for gameing, one for school, and one for work) So if you wanted to game, you could connect your gaming HDD (which only has the OS and your game programs, and none of your extra work files or anything) Or if you wanted to do work you could connect your work HDD drive and it would just have you work programs and files (and an OS obviously).

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1 Answer

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A. Assuming the BIOS can see the eSATA controller as providing bootable devices, and the installed OS has a drive for the controller, then sure.

B. I don't see why not, but Windows may not want to install on a drive that's considered "removable."

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there is no esata controller, its simply a bracket connecting to power and sata connections – Journeyman Geek May 18 '11 at 14:28
Some enthusiast motherboards provide eSATA ports on the motherboard I/O backplate that are connected to a 3rd party controller. Others have secondary SATA controllers to provide extra ports (or 6 Gb/s SATA ports if the main chipset doesn't support them). – afrazier May 18 '11 at 14:40

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