Installing Windows 7 on external Hard drive?

[samit]

I come here asking for a simple question. Is it possible to install W7 on an external HDD? A friend said YES to me that it can be installed. I cannot make a safeguard of my HDD, and if I must reinstall Xp afterwards, I consider that it is a waste of time…? And what if my HDD is in USB2?
Do I have to create partition for it or install it by just formatting a C: drive or D: drive? Thank you

[Expertz]

As far as I know you couldn't install the earlier versions of Windows OS on an external hard drive. It would basically be too easy to use the OS anywhere and it's not what Microsoft wants. I pretty much think that you are not able to install Windows 7 on external device.

[Allanoo]

Yeah I also have a a problem that initially Windows 7 did see my drive when I installed on my Western Digital 500GB MyBook External Hard Drive. I copied files off of it. I went to go put files on it today and it was nowhere to be found.

I am using Firewire 800 to connect. I tried USB and it found the device, but couldn’t finish installing the drivers. I was able to see folders, but no contents were displayed.

I wonder if something changed in the last few weeks that made the drive inoperable.

[newtech]

You can install Windows 7 From An External Hard Drive to an internal hard drive. Install Windows 7 from USB

format the drive to fat32, drag allfiles from iso onto new fat32 partition, mark partition as active, boot, install, win