Legit Reviews

Not sure if anyone has ever tried this, but if not here it goes. Since we can set up our USB flash drives to install our OS' I been sitting here thinking about if we could set up a HDD to install our Windows Operating system. We all know that installing from a Flash drive is in itself fairly fast, but what if I applied that technique to a SATA 2 HDD? I am not talking about a Mirror, or an image of our OS' either, actually installing Windows 7 (like how we do from a CD/DVD Drive) Well I applied the same technique as we do to a flash drive Guide can be located HERE, but instead of a flash drive I applied this to a Seagate 320 Gig Momentus 2.5" HDD that can reach speeds up to 80 or MB/s vs. the 20 or so MB/s that we are limited to on a USB 2.0 flash drive.

The above technique works on a HDD, I just haven't tried installing windows 7 onto a computer from this drive yet, but tomorrow I will.

Well I did manage to get windows 7 to install from the Seagate momentus HDD. But there was 1 small problem with it, after windows 7 got installed onto the SSD and when i set the boot order to boot from the SSD instead of the momentus HDD Windows failed to boot. Not because Windows did not get installed onto the main SSD, but because on how Windows 7 handles the System Reserved partition of the Windows 7 OS. What I believed windows 7 did was that it treated the Momentus HDD as a secondary HDD and placed the system reserved files onto that drive while it installed the main portion of windows onto the SSD. So once the boot order got moved or when I removed the HDD windows did not know what to load, in essence I know there is a bit more to it but you should still get the idea). I will have to say the installation portion of windows from the Seagate Momentus HDD was insanely fast..... For windows to install the files and expand them took roughly 45-60 seconds. Something for me to go tinker with.

You should be able to do this with an external hard drive. If you have a spare drive and a USB 3.0 plug then the install process should go pretty quick.

Unfortunately USB 3 is not recognized by windows 7. There has to be a way around this.

When you start to install Windows if you choose an advanced install there's an option to load drivers.

Alternatively, you could use an application like RT7Lite to integrate the drivers into the Windows install.
http://www.rt7lite.com/

okies, ty for that. I know that we can load drivers, the USB 3 ports are disabled until drivers are located. Now that little program you pointed out should make things work perfectly.