Vista Booting Off Usb Drive

I'm planning on installing a barebones Vista 32 bit (Vista Xtreem 1.01) on an old hard drive I have.

I don't want to mess up/go in and plug unplug my current setup on my computer so I was thinking about having it boot in an external USB 2.0 enclosure.

My BIOS, (Gigabyte GA 965P S3 Motherboard)supports booting off a USB device I am pretty sure.

My question is that since I am using this only for gaming and using DX10, do you know of any lags that could happen between the hard drive and the video card.

Since usb2.0 is pretty fast in spec, it should be fine right?

I always thought there was a huge difference in speeds when comparing USB 2 to your HDD or whatever. I mean USB 2 is fast, but no where near as fast as having the OS and stuff on your HDD.

Right? :unsure:

usb 2.0 is still only like 48mbps your hdd should be must faster as far as transfer rate. Think about when you copy form one HDD to another i almost always faster than from hdd to usb

This would be nice for someone that does not want to switch over to vista. Is it possible to load it up on a usb flash drive kinda like Damn Small Linux?

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Originally Posted by deep2k

This would be nice for someone that does not want to switch over to vista. Is it possible to load it up on a usb flash drive kinda like Damn Small Linux?

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dsl is 50mb best i remember...vista requires like 15gb just to get it to install. :lol:
How could you even compare them?:P

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gnash

usb 2.0 is still only like 48mbps your hdd should be must faster as far as transfer rate. Think about when you copy form one HDD to another i almost always faster than from hdd to usb

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i hate to say it, but its true

i would think there could be a way using like super PE to create a boot partition like you can with xp. knoppix lets you boot almost all linux distros on a usb partition there is even one to do like mac os 7 (old i know) but if someone had the time and inclination i believe it could be figured out. would require a base install of vista im sure.

I'm not talking about a "live" Vista that I would boot off of.

I'm talking about just having an full install of Vista, and choosing in the BIOS to boot off of the USB Device (an external hard drive) instead of internal hard drives (IDE and SATA)

I'm not too familiar with how WIndows Vista installation works. I was running XP Pro, created a 2nd partition on my exisitng HD, copied the Win Vista installation to my external USB HD, and ran the entire install off my USB. It rebooted several times, and my BIOS also supports booting off USB drive. The whole install ran without a hitch and completed inside an hour, unlike XP when I tried that!!

Seems like you should be able to run Vista straight off the USB drive, but like the others say, it'll be slower.