Disadvantages of operating system on external drive

Question

I am constantly traveling between two countries and I am constantly forced to bring my laptop with me. I was wondering if it is possible to install an operating system such as Linux or Windows on my external 1TB HDD. I would be very thankful if someone who is more knowledgeable share his or her thoughts on this subject. Also are there any disadvantages in having your operating system stored on external drive? Thank you in advance!

Solution

Are there any disadvantages in having your operating system stored on external drive?

Generally there are no disadvantages.

Practically: An external drive conneted via ESATA works just as well. An external SAS or an external SCSI drive will work just as well. A drive connected over USB will be slower. Partially due to needless packet overhead. If you use USB 2 expect it to be much slower, while USB 3.1 with UASP might be almost as fast as a regular laptop drive.

If you use windows (and you tagged it windows) its get tricky. For most versions you want to succesfully boot windows so it can start recognising USB devices. Catch 22...

There are at least two ways around that:

1. Windows to go.
2. Put windows in a VM. The vm disk image itself is just a data file. This will work extremely well for some things (like office stuff, reading mail etc) and poorly for others (mainly high FPS gaming).

Comments

[magicandre1981]

for Windows you need Win8/10, here you can create a WindowsToGo on the 1TB HDD. This works ok, if you have USB 3.0, USb 2.0 is a bit too slow.

[Biswapriyo]

For Linux, you've to use live bootable media, for Windows, you need Windows-To-Go. See more Live CD. You can make a pluggable SSD with portable apps.

[multithr3at3d]

Why does it have to be live bootable?

[Damon]

The OS is more likely to become corrupted due the nature of things being easily disconnected, susceptible to phyiscal impact and bumping, etc. Imagine if you HDD inside your computer got unplugged while running and bumped 100x more (compared to not at all); things just are not as reliable in such a case even with special care.