Can I install Windows Vista onto a USB Hard drive?

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I have bought a USB Hard drive with 500gb space and I was wondering if I could install Windows Vista onto it so I can go over to my mates and plug that in instead of taking the PC over...

Thanks.

Answer
As long as your BIOS detects the USB hard drive at startup, you should be able to install to it. As for taking it over to your friends house, that is difficult to say. If your friend has an almost identical system, then you could possibly do that. You'd need enough of the critical components (motherboard components, CPU type, disk controllers, etc...) to be identical in order to do that. If the network interface or video card differ, the OS may revert to defaults and you'll need to install them before using the OS.

How do I get a usb portable hard drive to work?

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I bought a verbatim usb Portable Hard Drive to store information on from my old pc with windows XP to my new pc with windows 7. I can not get the usb hard drive to show up on either pc. It shows a blue light on but otherwise it won't do anything.

Answer
a few possibilities:

A) it only has a usb cord, and it needs more power. Try a usb port on the back of the computer.

B) it has been corrupted. It will need formating. Here is a howto http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/format-usb-ntfs/

C) it's dead.

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