Is it possible to run an operating system from an external hard drive?

Really weird question here, but I've always wanted to know this. I have a MBP 13" mid-2012 and I installed a 256GB SSD. I currently have OSX 10.9 and Windows 8.1 installed on the drive, but is it possible to actually run an operating system from an external hard drive. I don't want to install anymore operating systems onto the internal SSD because I don't want to run out of space. So, I'm wondering can I install Linux on an external hard drive, the same way I would on an internal hard drive and just plug it in via USB 3 or Thunderbolt? Is it actually possible to use a computer this way? I know I can boot from a usb stick, so is it possible to actually use a computer with an operating system installed in an external hard drive?

windows don't support being installed on usb mass storage installs like usb

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Playing video and running an Operation System in the external hard drive

I am sorry that this question is not relevant to apple but I want to ask if I paly video or run an operation system on my external hard drive, will it shorten the life of my mac air or my harddrive.

Probably not. That said anything can and will eventually break but what you are doing what these devices were designed to do. Relax and enjoy.

What do I need to do to have my iTunes run on any operating system from my external hard drive?

I've already moved everything from my computer to my external hard drive, but for some reason I'm having a hard time being able to open the iTunes program every time I'm trying to open it on a different computer. I'm having to continuously uninstall and reinstall to be able to use it. I use my computer at home mostly but i also use my friends computer, and sometimes computers at school. Are there any files or anything that would enable be to be able to use it on any operating system or how can I get it working?

Draeon wrote:
You need to run the install file on the computer fresh as though you were installing itunes to the computer for the first time. Direct the installation to occur on your portable drive instead of in the typical destination folder (In the case of windows)
No, no, no... that is extremely bad advice.
Programs get installed on the main drive of the computer. Never install a program on a removable drive unless that program has been specificially designed to run on a removable drive.
Install iTunes on the computer as you normally would.
Once installed, hold SHIFT and launch iTunes.
When prompted select the option to point iTunes to an existed library.
Then point iTunes to the external drive.
Anytime you want to access the drive on a new computer, launch iTunes in the same fashion pointing it to the external drive.

Is it possible to run my iTunes library from an external hard drive?

As of right now my iTunes library is rapidly out growing my mac's capacity i have 120GB hard drive and am now down to about 20GB of storage due to my ever so growing iTunes library. Is it possible to transfer my entire library and run it off an external hard drive so i can free up space on my mac?

Hi Tnarduzzi,
I just bought a new imac (after having my old G4 Mirror door finally give out), and I am looking to access my music folder from an external HD to this new computer.
I have already set my preferences in the iTunes advanced tab to select the external drive and folder as my "itunes library" but nothing in my music folder appeared when I did that.
I've done as you listed below (to choose library) but when I chose the library, it said "An itunes library file could not be found in folder..."
The folder I am trying to access is an iTunes Library I once had on my internal hd, but moved to an external drive.
What seems to work is going to Edit and then clicking "add to library." Is this another correct way to access my music from the external drive, while keeping all changes (ie addition and changes to library) off the internal drive?
Are updates, addition, etc really going to the external, or am I working with two different libraries (external and internal) but I don't know it?
Looking forward to hearing from you or anyone who can shed light for me.
Thanks!

How do I move my operating system from one internal hard drive to another on the same Mac?

My question is pretty straightforward: How do I—or can I—move my operating system from one internal hard drive to another on the same Mac Pro desktop?

I'll let baltwo come in with a definitive answer, but the last time I just made a clone, CCC used Disk Utility to create a recovery partition on an external drive's partition. You get these windows successively (and it did create it with a message that it was successful):

Can i run i tunes/iphoto from an external hard drive?

does any one know if i can run ituens/iphoto from an external hard drive and if so how do i do it?

Drag the libraries to it, launch each application with the Option key held down, and point them there. The iPhoto library needs to be stored on a drive, partition, or disk image formatted as Mac OS Extended.
(85288)

Is it possible to run Adobe CC apps from a portable hard drive on multiple computers?

I work at a university that is not purchasing the Adobe CC license for it's labs. As far as I know Adobe will not create a deal that structures the fees in a way that makes it possible the University to buy into the CC platform.
This puts me a a tough spot as a person who teaches digital media in a University setting. Teaching legacy software (Adobe CS 5) puts our students at an immediate disadvantage.
To get around this issue, I have come up with the idea of having students purchase Adobe CC license short term (or longer if they like) as a textbook. However my lab administrators don't think there is a reasonable way to do this. Right now students would have to log into their User space on the University system, download software each time they came to class. This would not work for many reasons.
Is there a way to make Adobe CC portable, so students can download their own CC software and carry it around with them on a portable hard drive?
Would a system have to be installed on the portable drive or is there a way to run the software from a hard drive using the system on the computer it is attached to?
FYI the students and instructors have have no access to the computer systems, ex administrator or / root, level of the computers. Adding software and/or drivers can take months. Given time , I can get our IT folks to add a limited amount of structure to the system to make it possible for students to use Adobe CC from a portable hard drive if such a solution exists.
Thanks for your thoughts on this .
FYI the labs I need to MAC labs running OS 10.7.X (2.7 GHz Intel Core i5 - 4 GB RAM - 1 TB HDD) -

THe long answer is no.
Mylenium

Any problems running a 24inch iMac from an external hard drive.

Six weeks ago I cloned my almost full 250GB internal hard drive onto a 1TB external hard drive and started to run the system from the external drive.About a week ago the sytem started freezing up and the bootup/login times got longer. Two days ago at bootup the display just showed a purpleish glow with no desktop etc.I have tried reseting PRAM, SMC and reseating the memory all to no avail.Having searched on the internet the conclusion is either the display has gone faulty or the graphics card/chip is faulty(both not desirable).Is this mearly a coincidence or is it the result of running the system from an external drive which has 'possibly' caused overheating os some other fault ?????????
This system is a 2006/7 24-inch Intel iMac.

The difference between safe mode and normal is that in safe mode only the minimum number of kernel extensions are loaded. Since the display works properly in safe mode that strongly suggests that you have one or more corrupt kernel extensions. I would recommend one of two things. First if you have not already done so, reinstall the operating system - you can reinstall a new operating system right on top of the current. If that doesn't work or if you'd rather skip that step, the second thing would be a clean install. Of course to do this you would have to erase the entire hard drive so if you don't have a current backup you want to do that first.
However, since your original problems began after some crashing and freezing with the Extertal hard drive you might want to consider using a different drive if you choose the clean install route I suspect that your display problems go back to one of the early crashes which may have been caused by a hard drive issue. When the computer has issues but passes the extended hardware diagnostics I tend to suspect the hard drive. When the hard drive is an external drive my suspicion becomes even stronger. The weakest link of an external drive tends to be the electronics of the enclosure but since most external enclosures are in capable of passing on the SMART status of the drive mechanism itself it's hard to know which is the problem.

Can I run my iTunes library from an external hard drive?

My iTunes library is too big and I need to set it up to operate from an external drive.
How can I copy it to an external and run it out of the existing MAC?

iTunes: How to move [or copy] your music [library] to a new computer [or another drive] - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527
Quick answer if you use iTunes' default preferences settings: Copy the entire iTunes folder (and in doing so all its subfolders and files) intact to the other drive. Open iTunes and immediately hold down the Option (alt) key (shift on Windows), then guide it to the new location of the library.

Can you boot / run an Intel iMac from an external hard drive? Built-in drive is dead.

Hello, Have a six? year old, 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo iMac that has a dead internal HD. The drive has 16,000 hours on it (per SMART Utility) and no longer shows up on desktop. Disk Utility, Disk Warrior and SMART say it's toast. I'm backed up to Flash drives and Time Machine but need a month before I can get a new computer... Don't want to run this one off TM back-up. Question is, can I add an external drive, use TM to make it my start up drive until then... Thanks, dp

Yes you can, you're going to install OSX on it (from the Snow Leopard disk) but it will work.

Is it possible to use Lightroom/Photoshop directly from a external hard drive?

As a beginner at Lightroom and Photoshop and still having a large amount of old photos I want to work with, can I leave them on the external hard drive or do I have to import them to work on them? My constraint of course is space. Thanks, Wyndon

Your photos can reside on any hard drive or even a network drive that is connected to your computer. The import process doesn't put the image "in" Lightroom, but rather simply creates a pointer in the database so that Lightroom can keep track the adjustments and changes that you make. Lightroom will create a preview image, and you can control the size of those previews making them smaller if space on your hard drive is limited. You can even move the folder containing your catalog to the external hard drive if you want. This would minimize the amount of space taken by the Lightroom program. The catalog can reside on any hard drive connected to your computer, but cannot be on a network drive.

Any suggestions for running an iTunes library from an external hard drive on two computers?

I have two Mac computers: an iMac and a MacBook Air. My iMac has 1TB of storage space (plenty enough for my 200+gigs of music) but my MacBook Air only has 250gigs of storage space. I know I can access all of the music from my iMac on my MBA with HomeSharing. But that doesn't work when I take my MBA out of the house for work. I was going to switch over my iTunes library to an external HD but I don't know if I can access the library on the hard drive from my MBA, when the main library is on my iMac.
Any suggestions as to how to get two different computers to access an iTunes library from an external hard drive?
Thanks.

I am confused as to what you had or have where and when. The bottom line is, your library (for the standard user) is everything in the iTunes folder. As far as iTunes' organization and display is concerned, your library is a file called "iTunes Library.itl" which points to all the other host of files and folders normally in the iTunes folder which all work together.
What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660
More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management
What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html
Where are my iTunes files located? - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391
iTunes 9 [and later]: Understanding iTunes Media Organization - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3847 - plus supplemental information about organizing to new structure https://discussions.apple.com/message/26404702#26404702
Image of folder structure and explanation of different iTunes versions (turingtest2 post) - https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-7392 and making an iTunes library portable.
If you kept everything together in one place then you need to put the whole iTunes folder on the drive where you want it, start iTunes while holding down the option key and guide it to that .itl file. If things were split up and you had media on the external and the rest of the library on the internal you need to get them back to exactly where they were before. If you can't find that iTunes folder holding the critical .itl file anywhere then you have a bunch of media tracks and no organization and will need to rebuild the organization from ground level.

Run imac9,1 from an external hard drive?

Can I run my imac9,1 from an external hard drive??

Mac's cannot run a version of OS X earlier than what was shipped with the machine. For example if your iMac shipped with 10.6.4 it cannot run 10.6.3 or earlier on either an internal or external drive.
Roger
Neil: Do I have that right or am I missing something?
Message was edited by: rkaufmann87

Is it possible to run my iTunes solely from an external drive?

I'm a college student and don't have my own computer anymore, and I currently use campus computers and library computers (No admin priviledges).
I currently have all my previous iTunes music backed up on my external drive, and I have the iTunes package (The install package you download from Apple) also on there as well.
I'm basically wondering if I can install iTunes onto my external drive, open it from there, and also be able to access my music from there as well?
To give more clarification, I want to be able to go to a college or library computer (These computers are running on Windows XP or 7), be able to open iTunes from my external drive, and be able to manage and use my library from there.
With college and library computers, you don't have the admin rights to install iTunes. However, I do have friends that will let me use their computer to install iTunes onto my external drive (If that is possible). So not being able to install iTunes because of lack of admin priviledges is a barrier I can get through.
How ever I don't know if it's possible to run, and open iTunes from an external drive, and be able to open and use my iTunes library from there.
And help would be great.
Thanks in advance!

how would I go about putting my iTunes library on an external drive?
It depends on where your library is now and how it's organized. If you have all your content and library files in a single iTunes folder, drag the entire iTunes folder (the _entire_ folder, _not_ just the iTunes Music folder) to your desired location. Then hold down the Shift key while launching iTunes. You'll be given a dialog box where you can select the iTunes library you want to use. Navigate to and select the iTunes folder in it's new location. Note that this procedure assumes that all of your tracks are contained in the iTunes Music folder. If they're scattered around your volumes, moving them becomes much more complex. Don't delete the tracks from the old location until you've confirmed that they're working correctly from the external drive
Also is it possible to get past administrator rights, to install iTunes and delete iTunes each time I use a computer that I don't have administrator rights to? That way I can still use iTunes.
No, it's not possible. As with most applications, you need administrator rights to install iTunes.
Regards.

Is it possible to run an operating system from an external hard drive?

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