Running Windows 10 Pro On USB HDD?

NavyLCDR said:

I'm sure this is going to be a silly question.... Why not install a different hand drive in the laptop.

I would, but I don't have another 2.5inch HDD with me.

Well....look at this way. Will probably take you about an hour to set up Windows 10 Pro to run the USB hard drive and try it. If it doesn't work well enough for you then what have you lost? 1 hour of your time.

Hmm you say you have a eSATA port, this is what I would use, very little speed loss with eSATA the hard drive speed will be the bottle neck same as it is internally.

cereberus said:

A 32 GB is easily big enough to run windows - After all plenty of 32 GB tablets. Buy a fast usb3 drive though even if using on usb2, It will be a bit slow but not excessively so.

I thought it wouldn't matter if I was using USB 3.0 HDD since the USB port on the laptop was USB 2.0?

NiceAndShy said:

I thought it wouldn't matter if I was using USB 3.0 HDD since the USB port on the laptop was USB 2.0?

For an HDD, true.

I was really referring to flash drives which is not really relevant in your case.

Older usb2 flash drives were often a lot slower than the USB2 port speed. Even many usb3 flash drives are slower than the usb2 port speed (rather pointless them being usb3). However some usb3 flash drives are much faster, and if you use one of them, it will at least run at maximum speed possible on usb2 drive (note at best you may get 30-35 MB/s where usb2 port is nominally 60 MB/s in theory. Point is not many usb2 flash drives even reach much more than 10-20 MB/s but any decent usb3 drive should reach 30-40 MB/s.

Clintlgm said:

Hmm you say you have a eSATA port, this is what I would use, very little speed loss with eSATA the hard drive speed will be the bottle neck same as it is internally.

There is your answer. I wouldn't bother or waste the time on a USB 2.0 laptop, if you were using the USB ports.

DeaconFrost said:

There is your answer. I wouldn't bother or waste the time on a USB 2.0 laptop, if you were using the USB ports.

Sorry, but I'm not sure what you mean?

Are you saying that the eSATA port will be just as fast as a hard drive that was connected to the laptop internally?

Please help me understand?

NiceAndShy said:

Sorry, but I'm not sure what you mean?

Are you saying that the eSATA port will be just as fast as a hard drive that was connected to the laptop internally?

Please help me understand?

Real world benchmark tests show that eSATA and USB 3.0 provide basically the same performance from hard drives connected to them. So, if you have a computer with only USB 2.0 and eSATA - the eSATA port is going to be many times faster than USB 2.0. If you have a computer with USB 3.0 and eSATA, you could expect about the same performance from either one - provided that whatever you connect to the USB 3.0 port is also a USB 3.0 device.