Is it possible to make external usb clone drive the master drive and boot from it

By disabling every other usb device (card readers) I was finally able to clone my hard drive to a usb external drive, and I made a bootable disk. Nothing that I do in the BIOS will make the computer boot from the new usb clone. Will this usb clone never serve any purpose but to clone back to new internal drive, and serve as a backup? I bought it hoping it would replace the internal drive as the master drive. I changed the boot sequence, putting the cd/dvd drive first and the external usb drive second. And I listed the usb as the dirst hard drive and the internal drive as the second hard drive. All I get is a black screen and a blinking cursor.

 

If it's Windows, it won't work that way to boot from a USB drive. Windows has to be specially tweaked to be able to even boot that way. In addition, if Windows sees both drives (as duplicates), one will usually be modifed and rendered unbootable.

Normally, you would need to remove the USB drive from the enclosure and install it inside the computer in place of the original.

 

This is a small overpriced portable hard drive - no enclosure, just the drive. In 2006 and 2007 there were a number of posts about how to make a bootable usb clone. Not too clear, and done with an earlier version of acronis. So, I understand you to say that they won't help? I will buy another internal drive and use my little pearly pink usb drive for backups.

 

You'd be better off in most circumstances doing backups instead of clones. While, compared to backup files, a clone saves a little time when restoring (something that hopefully happens extremely rarely) it uses up an entire hdisk and so limits your backup history to one backup. With backup files you can usually fit many backups on one drive. If your drive goes wonky and you back it up, you can't restore to a prewoncky state unless you have an aearlier backup on hand.

 

I am pretty disgusted with Acronis True Image. I bought the program and a usb external drive. I didn't want to bother with an internal drive any more. Nothing in the literature told me that a clone on the usb drive would not be bootable as a master drive. Given the number of questions on this point, it seems to me that Acronis could have found a way to make this work in the 5 years that people have been asking for a way to do this.

 

Acronis is not in control of how Microsoft builds Windows. Windows was not designed to be booted and run from a USB drive. As already stated, Windows can be modified so that it can work. TI isn't going to make those changes.

If Windows is modified, then I would assume that it would boot from the USB drive if the drive letters don't get messed up and you didn't let the source Windows see the USB drive before you did the clone. You'd have to make the changes and try it to find out.