Can I clone my hard drive to an external and boot from the clone?

Question

First thing: I am not asking what software I'm supposed to use. I already know the answer: Ghost (proprietary), Clonezilla, and dd (if I'm careful).

What I really want to know is if it is possible to (essentially) bit-for-bit clone my entire installation (OS, installed software, activation(s), etc.) to an external USB hard-drive, and then boot off of that (if I need to, I know how to edit BIOS settings and use Plop boot manager), and work with it day-to-day as if there was virtually no difference from using my internal HDD now.

Again, I'm not asking how to install Windows to an external (because I know I'd need to do some special workaround), I'm asking if I can clone everything and boot off of it.

In case you're wondering why I'm going to this trouble: I'm using a Lenovo Essentials laptop that has an unmodifiable partition table (due to recovery crap), and has all 4 of its partitions spoken for (3 primary, one extended, cannot change the extended). Anyway, my thought is that if I can clone everything and boot off of it when I need to, and just have a Linux distro on the internal HDD, then that could work.

Solution 1

If you force windows to recognise the USB hard drive as a non-removable hard drive, then there shouldn't be any issues. How you would do that I'm not too sure as I haven't done this before, but this page may be of help -
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff541144%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

Theoretically, you would set the registry key, clone the hard drive, and then hopefully the registry key that you set would let windows boot off the now non-removable hard drive (even though it's actually a USB hard drive)

Solution 2

Yes you can, I use drive clone 9. Then after clone is done change your boot option in bios to boot to the cloned usb HDD ,just to check if the clone was created correctly.

Comments

[user88311]

Good question, I've been meaning to test this myself but have been busy with a computer that wont post, I would think so, at least for linux it would be no problem as it's built to run off anything, as for windows, might work, might need to run startup repair on first boot because if there are any other drives connected it might possible see the drive as a different letter, best to use dd to make sure you get a clean exact copy.

[Karan]

Are you asking about cloning Windows to an external HDD and booting directly from the drive when it's connected via USB? Windows won't ordinarily run from a USB drive.

[Thalys]

Having linux on the external drive is the smarter option, more or less.

[Scott]

What about if you clone to the USB drive then move the USB drive out of its case and then mount it internally would that work

[Karan]

So you're saying a cloned copy of Windows will boot from and run off an external USB drive?

[user1984103]

@Karan I've not tested, but I would expect it to. I would not expect that you can take it to another computer and boot it there, though, as that would deactivate Windows. I know you can image it from one internal harddrive to another just fine. If Windows doesn't boot from a USB external because it's USB, then that's an issue involving booting Windows over USB, not imaging Windows.

[Karan]

That last bit is what I'm focusing on. Windows normally refuses to boot from USB, and booting is an integral part of the question along with cloning.

[www139]

Will this work if the your booting off of a flash drive with cloned hard drive on it? (I'm in the same situation and my hard drive is very small [drive capacity = 40gb; used space=22gb; flash drive=30gb]). The new computer has a sata hard drive in it (80gb) and I'll want to move the contents of the flash drive to the sata hard drive, is that possible?

[DavidPostill]

Welcome to Super User! This is really a comment and not an answer to the original question. To critique or request clarification from an author, leave a comment below their post - you can always comment on your own posts, and once you have sufficient reputation you will be able to comment on any post. Please read Why do I need 50 reputation to comment? What can I do instead?

[Admin]

It's usually best to copy/clone from the original source if possible. Cloning from a clone can lead to issues...