[Username97]

Hello everyone.

I recently had a problem with my laptop, it suddendly turned itself off, and since then it doesn't turn on. It doesn't show any sign of life, it seems dead: if I plug the charger in, the leds don't blink. So I gave up and thought that at least I can save the hard disk. I unmounted the laptop, took the hard disk and bought an enclosure.

My idea was to use my brother's laptop, with my old hdd, now an external hdd, running the system from it.

I've just tried it and it worked. I turned on the laptop, rebooted it into uefi, and from there booted it from the external hdd (my old internal hdd that still have my files and has win 10 installed). It all went fine. But after a quick research on google, I've read that using an external drive as primary for a long period is bad. Do you have any clues of why? I've also read that I can't run a computer on the old internal hdd of a diffent computer because each windows installation is specific to each machine. Can you please explain me this concept?

Then, in the trial I made, I had to first boot from internal hdd, reboot into uefi and then run the external hdd. This laptop only has uefi and it seems to me that has no option, like in old bios, to set the boot order... because in bios I would have set to look for an usb boot device first, to then boot from the internal hdd This way if I wanted to run my system I only had to plug my external hdd and turn the laptop on, and if my brother wanted to use his computer, he could have done so as usual. Is it a way to do it in uefi systems?

Another thing that I'm worried about is that when I run the computer on the external hdd and then turn it off, the external hdd suddendly lose power beacause the computer has been turned off without first "safely removing the device", thing that I can't do because I'm running the system on it. When it happens the external hdd makes a sound like a snap, and it worries me because, as I know, power outages ruin your hard disk, and I guess that in this case, a similar thing is happening.

 

Thank you in advance for all your replies. I'm new to this forum so, I'm sorry if I've posted this in the wrong place. I would also say that I'm not english native speaker so sorry if ther's any mistake. Thank you once again.

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Best Answer

  Username97,

 

 after a quick research on google, I've read that using an external drive as primary for a long period is bad. Do you have any clues of why? 

 

 

Got a link to where you read this as I would like to see any foundations behind the statement.

 

I've also read that I can't run a computer on the old internal hdd of a diffent computer because each windows installation is specific to each machine. Can you please explain me this concept?

 

 

This is correct and for the following two main reasons: The Windows product key that was used when the HDD was in the original computer will not correspond with the motherboard information etc of the second computer. 2: The drivers that are installed on the HDD will be for the previous computers hardware, unless they are the exact same brand and model of computer you will at some point begin to encounter problems.

 

This laptop only has uefi and it seems to me that has no option, like in old bios, to set the boot order

 

 

Will need the brand and model name or number of the notebook concerned so we can do some research

 

 

 

[phillpower2]

Best Answer

  Username97,

 

 after a quick research on google, I've read that using an external drive as primary for a long period is bad. Do you have any clues of why? 

 

 

Got a link to where you read this as I would like to see any foundations behind the statement.

 

I've also read that I can't run a computer on the old internal hdd of a diffent computer because each windows installation is specific to each machine. Can you please explain me this concept?

 

 

This is correct and for the following two main reasons: The Windows product key that was used when the HDD was in the original computer will not correspond with the motherboard information etc of the second computer. 2: The drivers that are installed on the HDD will be for the previous computers hardware, unless they are the exact same brand and model of computer you will at some point begin to encounter problems.

 

This laptop only has uefi and it seems to me that has no option, like in old bios, to set the boot order

 

 

Will need the brand and model name or number of the notebook concerned so we can do some research