can usb powered hard rive be used for os?

might seem daft, but in the software section i was asking about windows 10 as i refuse to upgrade my 8.1 to it as i prefer this and someone suggested a 2nd drive for the free upgrade so i have both all on my system.

now i see a 30gb ocz ssd for £15 and was thinking about it, but i realised i only have 4 sata ports on my board and they all in use and as i have a laptop hard drive in a usb power enclosure for back ups, i was wondering whether this solution would work well for an os? i know theres stuff like ready boost and have read about people using usb flash drives sticks, but i only use those for installs of os or programs, so not experienced with running systems and a 32gb stick can be more costly than say a 40-80gb laptop drive.

http://www.easyuefi.com/ win to USB might be what you want, personally Ive used it in the past to play with, but the window installs seem to fall apart after being rebooted/moved around a few times on various machines. so I would say play with it, but dont rely on it as a stable way to install an OS

A better alternative (if you have a vacant PCIe slot) might be an add-in SATA controller card to give you a couple more ports - you can get one with ASM1061 chipset for around £15 (better performing than Silicon Image or Via alternatives).

I think you'll need to separate OS licenses as well.

thanks for replies.

as for licenses, i own windows 8.1 as i have the disc and key and i own an iso of 32bit win 7 home/pro as i saved keys from previous computers/laptops i owned before scrapping, its how i get to test.

ironically my board only has pcie x 1 slots other than the x 16, so i cant go for the every day cheap alternatives that are the pci types, but not all conversions have been smooth working, but i will look as those expansion cards again. its only because i do use my optical drive at times that i cant spare one to not lose my storage solutions,.

If done right and taken care of it will work but would not use it for any mission critical stuff.

I type from win10 which operates of my beloved Mushkin Ventura Ultra 120gb USB 3.0 flashdrive (it is in fact USB 3.0 SSD drive) - lovely piece of kit I could not recommend it more to anybody.

It is faster to run the OS this way then internal SSD on this particular laptop... (however this is not the reason why I do it this way)

Cheers

30gb ocz ssd

Click to expand...

Too small.I know as I used this size for a W7 install and within a few updates was down to about 2GB left

You can just about get away with running Windows 10 on a 32GB SSD but you'll need additional storage for any programs or files as you'll need to pretty much dedicate the entire ~28GB to the OS.

Seems a bit too small imo

Thanks for replies guys.

The ssd is now a tenner lol, i know its a OCZ brand, but should be still decent? I haven't seen any 60gb versions cheap enough.

The drives in my sig are what I use so the 750 & 500 are for storage and suppose little back up when my 500gb 2.5 enclosure powered drive is full from back ups etc lol, so the ssd would be strictly to put my 8.1 on and upgrade to Windows 10 and boot to that when I don't need my optical drive if it work out better than running from USB.


was thinking of using my 500, but it's been awhile since I've had 2 operating systems on same system via 2 drives, so I don't know if 750 be enough for both? I need to free up my C drive as I have less than 200gb out of 1tb

I have had OCZ SSDs die on me. They are not THAT good for SSDs.... Or maybe they are now, but not last year.

As for an OS through USB... It wont be quick, but its perfectly useable if you dont mind the speed drop.

Its been said that it gets iffy after a while, but if you are using only the one PC and not moving the OS around, you should be ok.

30GB is simply far too small. 60GB if you are extremely strict with the software.

For what its worth, I have put XP64 onto a 64GB USB 3 Drive and it runs great. Trouble with USB is finding a Mobo that lets you use the speeds cos some of my boards that do have USB 3 wont let me have the full usb 3 speeds. Luckily my good ones do, or at least I think they do LOL?