A flash drive as a hard drive?

[Yoshiyuki Blade]

While I was reinstalling Windows XP, I left a flash drive in the USB port, and it appeared on the list with the other hard drives. Of course, since it's only 256 megs, I couldn't install Windows on there to see what happens.

So I have a question: Is there a portable way to boot into your own Windows using USB devices (including external hard drives) with different computers, or are they just simply used to store data?

 

[defakto]

Flash drives have a very limited lifetime of writes. They will degrade slowly over time, so a windows system with a pagefile will eventually make the drive unusable.

 

[upriverpaddler]

Yes, you can boot your PC from any attached USB device if your BIOS has the option. Thumb Drive (lots of tutorials for Linux on Google), CF drive

( http://www.tvharmony.com/blog/archives/2004/12/booting_windows_1.html ) ,

or external HDD (install OS to drive).

And as defacto sez, the read/write process will shorten your flash drives lifespan. But it shouldn't be a problem with an external USB HDD.