How-To Geek

Hi,

I have created an image by Macrium for my entire hard disk which has five partitions:
C(O.S), D:(DATA) are logical
System partition, Recovery partition and HP tools partition are primary

I restored all the partitions to another external hard disk

So, I think now I can boot from either of the internal hard disk or the external hard disk as long as both contains the same OS.
However, when I tried chpriority prerioty of booting devices in BIOS so that first boot device is the external hard disk and the internal hard disk is the second. So the Oexternal exteranl hard disk should be booted.
But the reverse has been happened. The OS on internal hard disk always booted, However first boot device is external hard disk.
Why????

Thank you so much
Yes, I restored the image to another external hard disk, so I now have two similar OS, one is on the internal hard disk; the other is on the external hard disk
So, as long as I have changepriorityty of booting devices to the external hard disk the first, so OS should be booted from external hard disk.

OS which has been restored to the external hard disk only contains programs installed on it before imaging. However, OS which is on the internal hard contains the last and new programs installed after creating image. So, if the OS booted from external hard disk, I would know that.

I hope you understand me,

I restored an image of OS to two destinations (internal hard disk and external hard disk)

I don't have any problem with image of OS overwritten to my internal hard disk.
The OS is working well.

However, I didn't see that OS overwritten to my external hard disk doesn't boot while the first boot is from it instead of internal hard disk

if the first boot device in the BIOS is internal hard disk, so OS which is no internal hard disk should boot
if the first boot device in the BIOS is external hard disk,OS which is on external hard disk should also boot

This is the pricuter of my internal hard disk and external hard disk:
Both of them have the similar OS.

NB: when I imaged the image, I have imaged five partitions,(C:(OS), System, presonal data, Recovery, HP tools). However, as you that only the C and system partition important for OS.
So, I have previously resotred all the five partitions to the internal hard disk.
Today, I have restored three partitions of an image(C,System, and personal data and left two, which are(Recovery, HP tools) to my external hard disk, which has one partitions previously overwritten a different image of data.
So, external hard disk: Presonal data(I)(previously overwritten), J, k and L recently overwritten
As a result,

G on Disk0(internal) = J on Disk1(external)
C on Disk0(internal) = K on Disk1(external)
D on Disk0(internal) = L on Disk1(external)

Then, I will understand from your speech that If my internal hard disk have been corrupted, must I purchase another internal hard disk .
In other words, Laptops have the external usb drives and internal NON usb drives, which are only used to be fixed inside a laptop.

I really have never ever seen the internal hard disk of a laptop. SO I thought that I can use an external drive instead of internal drive

@whs, just curious, can you kindly provide a link on how to go about installing and running Windows 7 on an external drive as I have been trying to do this when a friend's laptop hdd controller failed, but to no avail. Thanks.

Hope I'm not hijacking, since it's somewhat related to OP's problem.

@whs, Very nice tutorial but I'm afraid would not be applicable to my friend's laptop since the hdd controller is broken, the host system where VMware will be installed should ran from the external hdd which I'm afraid is almost impossible in Windows 7. Anyway, the tutorial gave me lots of ideas to solve a friend's problem. Thanks again!

Yeah, but as I've said, the tutorial, gave me some ideas like running linux from the external drive + VMware + Windows 7 but do not want to discuss here because that would be (if I am not already) hijacking. Wonder what has happened to the op.