External Hard drives

[I.C.D (Ian)]

G'Day All,
I don't how to word this but I will have a go .
Can you use a external hard drive to put all your Astronomy gear on then use the laptop as normal bypassing the laptop hard drive or do you have to use the hard drive that is in the laptop as well .
I hope this makes sense.

Ian C

[pluto (Hugh)]

I may not be understanding you correctly but I think you're asking if you can have a completely seperate install of your operating system with all your astro software on an external usb drive so you could boot straight into that and basically ignore whatever is on your internal drive...?

If so this should be possible. I'll assume you're talking about running Windows and it is possible to install on a usb drive. (this would also work with linux, I don't know about OSX)

Your bios will have to be able to boot from usb but unless it was made last millennium it should.
Also you would want it to be on a pretty fast drive and preferably through usb3 otherwise it's going to run pretty slowly.
I once had a linux install on an ExtremeIII SD card and it ran pretty well.

[rogerco (Roger)]

If rather than a laptop you talk about desktop machines then you can keep things separate by having multiple drives and simply mount your hard disks in trays and then simply swap them over.

Linux can certainly be run from USB sticks (or drives), in fact you can buy them with Linux pre-installed.

[rally]

OSX permits booting off a USB drive too

[OICURMT]

Your question has a rather complex answer... I'll give it a try.

Assumption #1 - Windows

Windows is an interesting operating system. Firstly, the O/S contains a basic set of drivers that can handle common motherboard chipsets, integrated video cards etc... The default set of drivers is no way adequate to run anything other than maintenance programs. For example, the graphics driver is based on the old VGA standard and will driver resolutions up to 1024x768 in non-hardware accelerated mode. The chipset drivers contain enough to initate most of the chipset architecture, but not all. Generally speaking, motherboard manufacturers provide additional drivers for Windows to load. Additionally, windows itself will not install to a USB drive (you’ll have to clone the internal drive to the external one).

So, where does this leave us? Well, once you have the HDD imaged to the USB drive, you can get into the BIOS and tell it to boot from the USB.

Problem solved…. Or is it?

If you take the USB drive off and try it in another computer that does not have the same hardware configuration, Windows will have to load the drivers or you will have to install them manually. This mean that you will need to have the Windows DVD image located on the external drive so you can install any drivers that your “new system” requires. Since there are endless possible hardware configurations, you will need to have all the drivers for all hardware you have. Easily done if you have a large external drive… Soooooooooo…

Problem solved…. Or is it?

Windows stores the hardware configuration of the machine you install it on and notes any hardware changes over time. If the configuration completely changes from the previous one, it notes it and results in an error when it comes to the validation process (it thinks you have a pirated version of Windows running, as it was on a different machine previously). You will have to re-register Windows over the internet. If you unplug the external drive and put it in another machine, you will have the same problem. Five times and you are out… you’ll have to call Microsoft and explain the situation at which point you will be told you are in violation of the end-user agreement, as the operating system is technically being used on more than one machine.

Assumption #2 – Linux.

Everything regarding the need for all drivers still applies for Linux, however, since Linux is modular, almost every hardware driver is already installed and are loaded dynamically as the system boots up. You won’t even notice that different drivers are being loaded. The exception is graphic drivers, which are vendor specific. However, you can write a script and place it in /etc/init.d to query and load the correct driver on start-up.

Assumption #3 – Apple

Isn’t that a fruit?

[naskies (Dave)]

OS X is easy. Hold down the Option key during booting to start from a different drive, and hold down the T key to turn the entire computer into an external USB/Firewire drive. The installed OS is effectively interchangeable between all the consumer versions of the hardware supported by that version of OS X - laptops, iMacs, and Mac Minis.

[noeyedeer (Matt)]

I read it as ... if x is installed to d: (external) then x will run off d:

programs will run off wherever it is installed to

I remember having win3.1 setup for a multiconfig bootup, some games wanted emm386 or was it a particular segment of himem.sys ...(can't remember) and that wasn't part of a native win3.1 setup without a bootdisk or a config.sys and autoexec.bat fiddle.

if it can be done it will be done. can't see the problem with this either ... but I havnt used a computer in years.

honestly I wouldnt trust an external hard drive with the movies my mate put on it ... let alone all your gear.

[noeyedeer (Matt)]

Originally Posted by rogerco

If rather than a laptop you talk about desktop machines then you can keep things separate by having multiple drives and simply mount your hard disks in trays and then simply swap them over.

Linux can certainly be run from USB sticks (or drives), in fact you can buy them with Linux pre-installed.

yeah hard drive caddies are awesome ...specially the ones hard wired to the mb ... the usb ones are still lagging behind