3rd Hard Drive and Vista

[bproulx12]

Anyone get Vista to run on an external hard Drive?

[chip19]

When I installed Vista, I used a similar strategy as VirtualBody. I physically unplugged the old drives from the motherboard and PSU, and then I installed the new SATA drive. I installed Vista, allowing it to use the whole drive for itself. From there, I plugged in the old drives and Vista automatically recognized them, so I can get data from them.

HOWEVER, if you have any desire of dual-booting, I recommend you keep the OS drive of your old system plugged in (just put it as a slave or secondary HD), as Vista will automatically detect and install an entry for it in the boot loader. It isn't a huge deal if you don't do it this way (I posted a link to a guide that let's you dual boot if you had your drives unplugged during the Vista install or if you install another OS after Vista is already installed in this site's guide section), but it's not really worth the hassle if you can avoid it.

[Dr. Noah]

I would...

- Unplug your current drives and put them aside for safe keeping.
- Plug in the new drive and install Vista on it (partitioned the way you like).

If ever you want to go back to the older setup, just unplug Vista and reconnect your old drives.

Yeah i agree with you that is what i would also do