Booting windows from an external HDD

[joewatt]

My internal HDD may be about to fail and I want to back it up to an external HDD. Question is, will I be able to boot from the external HDD?

 

[ksiemb]

My internal HDD may be about to fail and I want to back it up to an external HDD. Question is, will I be able to boot from the external HDD?

What do you mean by "backup" ?
Is USB a boot option on your Computer ?

 

[joewatt]

Thanks for your reply. Actually I'm not clear about the difference between backing up and simply copying the contents of a drive. Can you explain?

USB boot is an option.

 

[farrengottu]

you can clone/ghost your drive. i suggest Macrium reflect
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
you can clone the drive with this. what cloning does is, rather than just getting the viewable files its gets all files and the boot info, etc.
after using it you can just tell your computer to boot to the new drive and your done.

edit:
oh and yes you can boot from an external drive. it will be one of your boot options in the bios, make sure the drive is plugged in when you boot.

 

[joewatt]

Sounds like this is what I want to do - thank you!

 

[joewatt]

Best answer selected by joewatt.

 

[nikorr]

This topic has been closed by Nikorr.