HELP! Install bootable Windows 7 Installer to external Seagate Expansion Desk

Mar 24, 2018
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I have a Dell Optiplex 780 SFF (From what I read it has UEFI) with an internal hard drive I cannot boot from and I'm wondering If I can use my Seagate Expansion Desk 1TB like if how you would use a USB flash drive/stick to install windows from? if so do I have to format and clean the disk using diskpartition and remove all data? can I keep some of the files and just boot from a new partition I make? Because I have about 500 gb occupied and I made a new partition called X: New Drive and used bootrec command on it and placed the windows installation files on it. but my Dell won't boot from it even though it recognises the device as "USB Device" I also changed the boot order to set priority to USB Device and tried setting Sata handling from RAID to Legacy but no luck there. I'm kind of losing hope and thinking If I should get a flash drive but if possible I'd like to use this external drive to install windows from OR if possible install a bootable windows OS into this drive. there are files on this external drive AND the internal drive of the Dell so If possible I would want to access them.. I have a NEC laptop I'm doing all this work on from that is running Windows 10 if that matters. any help would be appreciated!
 
Solution
Creating the Win 7 install on that USB HDD WILL reformat it and it WILL wipe all the files on it.

Go to the store and get an 8GB USB stick.
Mar 24, 2018
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Thank you so much for the answer, however I'm wondering.
So I can't use a partition of it instead and format it? I have to format the whole drive?
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator


It will redo the base formatting of the whole drive.
It will become FAT32. Wiping out whatever is on there.
 
Mar 24, 2018
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Thank you again, and I'm very sorry for my ignorance I'm new to this. so to make it clear I can't use partitions at all? and save the rest of the data in the other storage partition? because it appears to be able to use FAT32 on Drive Partition X: and still use NTFS on the other, much larger disk partition E: ? also to confirm, it IS possible to install windows this way? sorry for asking too much I'm really new to this! :)
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator


Go to the store tomorrow and buy a USB stick.