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1 hard drive, 2 computers?

Legolessed
By Legolessed
in Storage Devices
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Is it possible to use 1 hard drive as the boot drive for 2 different computers and if so, are there any specification limitations that must be the same between the two computer or something? The drive woul d be moving back and forth between the computers btw. Thank you!

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Posted

There's no way that I would know how to do that except for dividing your drive up into two partitions and assigning each partition to each computers OS. What I would recommend instead of doing that is getting something like a 512 gb SSD for both computers putting OS' on both and turn that hard drive into a Network drive and share it between both of the computers VIA your LAN connection (this is also known as a file share... I think you might also be able to use things like an FTP client to transfer files between both computers but I haven't tried that yet). There are a bunch of guides online on how to create a network drive and some WiFi routers can even do that; if you decide to use your router you might have to get a SATA to USB cable to connect it. But honestly I wouldn't recommend turning your one hard drive into a boot drive for two different computers. 

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Posted

Why you just don't buy a second one?

 

I mean, there are many things you should consider not doing that.

ESD protection, drivers, the connector itself, and funnily enough you could drop it and loose all data.
 

 

 

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10 minutes ago, IrishJ said:

Why you just don't buy a second one?

 

I mean, there are many things you should consider not doing that.

ESD protection, drivers, the connector itself, and funnily enough you could drop it and loose all data.
 

 

12 minutes ago, ShelterMan said:

There's no way that I would know how to do that except for dividing your drive up into two partitions and assigning each partition to each computers OS. What I would recommend instead of doing that is getting something like a 512 gb SSD for both computers putting OS' on both and turn that hard drive into a Network drive and share it between both of the computers VIA your LAN connection (this is also known as a file share... I think you might also be able to use things like an FTP client to transfer files between both computers but I haven't tried that yet). There are a bunch of guides online on how to create a network drive and some WiFi routers can even do that; if you decide to use your router you might have to get a SATA to USB cable to connect it. But honestly I wouldn't recommend turning your one hard drive into a boot drive for two different computers. 

I know it's not practical and it's a really long story but the drive would never move and the connector would never be plugged in or unplugged, I just wanted to know if it was possible. 8 have an idea and for it to work it has to be one drive it could be a hard drive or an SSD I guess bu5 it would have to be one drive. If having that is not possible could I put a small drive in both computers with Windows and then have them both share the second drive for storage and just have all of the files stored on it? I'm sorry I know this is a weird question!

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Well try it I guess? Either it works, or it won't, but tell us if it'll work.

 

You also could try Windows2Go, maybe that'll be your solution!

 

 

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The drive has to have some good operating system, that won't have problems with different mobo and CPU. 
So Windows XP, or 10, or some linux distro.
there are limitations with windows XP with newer hardware, but it's good on older hardware. 

   
 
 
 
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