As per the title, I have an RC Copy of Windows 7. Can any genius advise if I can load it so that it boots from an external drive rather than overwriting Vista?
Generally there is no way to load it onto an external drive. This linkis to a blogger that indicates he has a way around the limitation. Please note, I have not tried this myself and am in no way a genius.
Thanks Cyros. At least you know more than I do.
Are we talking USB or eSATA, for the external drive? (The linked article specified USB).
I once installed Vista on an eSATA drive for troubleshooting purposes, with no difficulty. Does Windows 7 prevent this for some reason?
Also, if you can get to the bare drive by opening up your external drive’s case, you could plug it into a regular SATA port on your computer’s motherboard. That should allow you to install OK. Then just reassemble the external drive and select boot from USB in the BIOS.
I know this isn’t directly what you’re asking, but you do know that, if you’ve got enough free space, you can put 7 in a new partition on your existing hard drive?
I put the Windows 7 files on a USB thumb drive and used it to install onto an external eSATA drive … been dual booting XP and 7 for several months.