windows xp nstall on a usb harddrive

ok quick question, would it be safe to install windows xp for a laptop(curently runing vista home 64-bit) on a external hard drive? since laptop hard drive a expenive and i dont have enuf space on my laptop hard drive as it is i thought it might be a good ideal  just to install xp on a external hard drive. now could this in some way mess up ANY THING on my laptop from the mbr(im still kicking myself from that ubuntu install) to the bios, configuration will the pc still boot in to an os if the external hard drive is disconnected? and will it mess up vista in any way?

 

ok if i was to get a new internal hard drive and install would it be safe then?

 

Unless you're installing linux, don't do it.

 

well i guss i will see when the time comes, by the way this isent the same pc that has the brook mbr if that was what you wore refuring to by "breaking the install again" and bloodVayne iv gave up on linux a long time ago

 

you can install a Operating system on a external harddrive? what if you dont put the external HDD and then open the comp/laptop? what will happen?

 

well technically you can install a os on any data holding device form a thumb dirve to a external hard drive as long as theirs enough space to hold the os but whether its a good ideal or not is a different story

 

Don't install your main OS on an external HDD. If you disconnect it, it will crash either your OS (when it's running), or simply not boot (giving an error).

My advice is to move some of your backup data (like stuff in My Documents) to your external hdd. On a 40Gb hdd you can easily run two OSes (excl. large programs like Adobe).

 

yeah but right now my hard drive is pretty full with things that cant be erased so it cant host two OS, right now i only have 528mb on my OS partition and 2.88G on my data partition(my laptop came with three partitions on one hard drive. on one of the partitions is where the OS(C is installed the second one is kinda like a backup partition and the third is a recovery thing which rewrites the every thing on the OS partition

 

How much space you have left isn't an issue. How large is your data partition and what is on it? And how large is your entire hdd?

 

changing internal drives in never a problem. that is installing normal on a normal drive?

there is a windows xp usb version, i believe made by microsoft. but there is definatly cracked versions that will only take up 90mb of space.
maybe only good for a carputer or something else that will NEVER see the internet.

always use externals for storage. and don't partition newer drives, it's kinda der. and a win xp 32bit installation can be trimmed down to, maybe, off the top of my head just shy of 3gig. updated to service pack 3. my "windows" folder, and only it. just for example. is 2.67gig, size on disk 2.17gig, ntfs and windows's compress old files "if those matter"

Edit: im on an 80gig with my os and programs. with a 40gig "work" drive that is handling massive amounts of data movement. .iso's and game work, easily hitting 10gigs of movement in a day. "i back it up constantly" and as always, use diskkeeper defragmenter.

 

about 160G,

and fallenleader hows the usb xp? can it run games and such? do you know whos a good distributor of it?(like the group who makes it)

 

err, i always had trouble running the hacked xp's.
do a google on "xp on usb" and see what comes up.
as for tiny xp versions, one is called tiny xp and the other i dont remember the name of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TinyXP
DSL "damn small linux" is pretty nice but im a linux moron. it's nice, better but confuses me and isn't so many programs/games for it. dsl runs off a usb. and i was reading this. http://apcmag.com/pirated_windows_more_impressive_than_the_real_thing.htm

 

ok i thank il look in to tiny xp as for dsl i dont touch linux any more

 

if you use tinyxp, careful. it's illegal. any windows not sold by microsoft in a nice fresh microsoft box with the smell of microsoft will be causing trouble possibly.

 

you don know who your talking to im a pro pirate i have a cracked version of xp allready

 

darn no games on tiny xp, and i know how to fix the mbr i just dont have the right tools for it, and every one makes mistakes sometimes