As I am experimenting with Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2, like many of you are, I wonder why Microsoft continues to make its operating systems incompatible with booting from an external USB drive. Virtualization is all well and good if you happen to have Hyper-V, but with Virtual Server 2005 and Virtual PC, there are so many gotchas and caveats (such as the one mentioned in my previous post) that one longs for a simpler world… a world in which you could boot different operating systems by simply swapping external USB hard drives. (Yes, there have been a few laptops throughout the years that have permitted easy swaps of internal hard drives, but those have certainly not been the norm.)
I was in a beta newsgroup three or so years ago, and one of the beta testers asked a Microsoft engineer whether it would be possible to boot Vista from an external USB drive. He replied that “external hard drives are not for booting operating systems.” That does seem to be Microsoft’s opinion, but I don’t think it’s a Law of the Universe or anything.
In fact, I *know* it’s not a Law of the Universe because the Mac permits booting from external drives… and has done for several years now. Folks on Mac forums occasionally carp about how inconvenient it is that they can’t use the same external drive to boot a PowerPC Mac and an Intel Mac. I want to chime in and tell them to count their blessings – at least they can boot from an external drive at all!
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