My New USB External HD.

[shinene]

Really getting confused about what an external hard drive means.
Just bought an external hard drive [so to say] 2.5" SATA, USB 2.0
From the look of things, its like me attaching a pen-drive into my Laptop difference is just the space...40GB.
My thinking is that, I can run any O.S. from it, i don't wanna work from the Laptop. Or install any program which i should be be able to run any time i wish to.

Or probably, am missing out on something.

So could anyone pls tell if i can still do something tangible with it [i.e. getting to its full potential]

[jlreich]

Booting from a USB drive is still not fully supported. First your system has to support it. Next most OS's are not meant to be booted this way. There are ways to get certain OS's to boot like this but for the most part it takes hacking.

There are a couple of Linux distros that are made for doing this. But again yor system has to support it.

You can install programs to it, but it is not recommended as USB is much slower than an internal drive and you will see a performance hit. Even then you can not take the drive and hook it up to another system and expect the programs to run.

External drive are more meant for storing data.

If you would like to tell us more about what you want to accomplish perhaps we can offer a more practical solution.

[Sylvander]

See below the screenshots of the PORTABLE PROGRAMS I have within a folder on a partition on my external USB 2.0 HDD.

These programs put no settings in the registry, and can be run from anywhere that the Operating System [installed internally?] can access.
Each program can be run by a certain list of OS's, usually various versions of Windows.
You may notice that sometimes I've listed those in the names of a folder beneath which the program is held.
That's a simple way of knowing which OS's can run the program.
"you can not take the drive and hook it up to another system and expect the programs to run"
In such cases you can.
.

[jlreich]

Oh yes portable apps are wonderful. And I use them myself. But for full installed programs it won't work.

[Erik]

Why do you not want to run programs or the OS from the internal HD? Typically a USB HD would be used to give extended storage for data, or backups, etc.