From external HDD without erasing data

[lifesamd]

I dont have a pen drive right now.. And I dont have a optical disk drive in my system. All I have is an External HDD.. that's what I always use for transferring files.. So I dont need pendrives. Now, I have the iso file for installing windows8. The problem is that I dont wanna format my whole External Hard disk. I have sooo many things in there that I have downloaded over the last year and half.. I just cannot delete all that data.. And the system also doesnt have enough free space to accommodate all that data.. So, is there a way to make this drive bootable while also keeping all that data? I knew of a way.. That had something to do with changing the folder name.. Something like adding $$ i guess... Does someone know how to do it?

 

[kyllien]

If you are going 32bit to 32bit or 64bit to 64bit you can start the install while the previous version of windows is loaded. If you are switching between 32bit and 64bit you will need to boot an external USB device or DVD.

All you need is to either upgrade or buy a cheap 4GB thumb drive and use that for the Windows 8 Install.

 

[lifesamd]

If you are going 32bit to 32bit or 64bit to 64bit you can start the install while the previous version of windows is loaded. If you are switching between 32bit and 64bit you will need to boot an external USB device or DVD.

All you need is to either upgrade or buy a cheap 4GB thumb drive and use that for the Windows 8 Install.

ya, I know all that... have installed OS 1000s of times.. What i wanted to know is that how to install it from a drive without formatting it.. I mean install it from a drive while keeping a game or something else in the same drive!

 

[kyllien]

All the instructions I have found to configuring the external USP drive involve deleting and recreating the partitions and formatting the drive. Both of those steps remove the data from the drive. You also don't want extra files on the drive as they can interfere with the install process. You would also be creating a bootable drive which can create issue with the boot process later if you force the bios to always boot to that device.

 

[mhine022110]

If your External HDD is in NTFS file system, mount the .iso file you have then copy all of it's contents into your External HDD and run this commands from an elevated Command Prompt:

"cd /d [Drive Letter where the .iso is mounted]:\boot"
"BOOTSECT.EXE /NT60 [Drive Letter of your external HDD]: /force"

Set your BIOS to boot first with the External HDD then REBOOT.