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I had a Windows 8 installation on my laptop in its 2.5" SATA HDD, as well as a Linux install with Grub as the main boot loader.

I now bought an SSD, and decided to go for a clean install. So, I unplugged the HDD and plugged the SSD. There's only one SATA port on this laptop (as usual), so I can't keep both disks inside.

I will now install Windows 10 on my SSD, but I would still like to plug the previous HDD via a USB bridge and boot Windows 8 from it, since it contains software I will not be installing on my new system but may sometimes want to go back to (mostly college-time software).

I thought this would work just fine, and the Linux system on the same HDD agreed - Linux handled the change smoothly.

Windows is a different beast. As soon as I booted it, I got a blue screen, a reboot, a repair environment, another reboot, and a screen that stated "Attempting repairs" for almost one hour before I decided to force-power-off. Now it simply reboots immediately without even showing the Windows logo.

Did I just break my previous Windows installation? Is it not possible to plug the same hard drive with the same contents to the same computer, but using USB3 instead of SATA?

guest
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  • Windows does not like being booted from an external drive - see https://superuser.com/questions/572056/booting-windows-8-from-external-hard-drive – Tetsujin Jun 30 '20 at 15:18
  • @Tetsujin: the second answer to that question mentions the exact procedure I followed and it seemed to have worked for him, so there may be hope. Nevertheless, I see no reason why Windows should act up when running from USB. It's still the same disk and the same data... – guest Jun 30 '20 at 16:11
  • I've booted Windows 10 off an msata SSD inside [this USB enclosure](https://www.sabrent.com/product/EC-MSMU/msata-to-usb-3-0-2-5-inch-sata-iii-aluminum-enclosure-adapter/) with no issues. Note that I first installed Windows to the drive using a VM and instructions similar to [this](https://www.serverwatch.com/server-tutorials/using-a-physical-hard-drive-with-a-virtualbox-vm.html) to connect the physical SSD to the VM. – emilh Jun 30 '20 at 18:49

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