Booting from USB drive?

[KGL]

Hi there! Quick question that I could not find the answer for:

If I clone my system drive to a external usb drive (EFI partitions and everything), will I be able to boot from this drive and run it as my system drive? I know this is not advised, but I'm currently thinking of using this for testing.

Thanks!

 

[UtterDisbelief]

Hi there! Quick question that I could not find the answer for:

If I clone my system drive to a external usb drive (EFI partitions and everything), will I be able to boot from this drive and run it as my system drive? I know this is not advised, but I'm currently thinking of using this for testing.

Thanks!

Yes, you can. Though I wouldn't clone another system, but install as fresh.

Your "new" system drive will appear as a USB or External icon on the desktop.

I run a couple of different versions in a USB3.0 caddy and it works surprisingly well. Just be very careful mounting drives or installing patches/updates/apps that you choose the correct destination.

 

[KGL]

Yes, you can. Though I wouldn't clone another system, but install as fresh.

Your "new" system drive will appear as a USB or External icon on the desktop.

I run a couple of different versions in a USB3.0 caddy and it works surprisingly well. Just be very careful mounting drives or installing patches/updates/apps that you choose the correct destination.

Thanks for the info!
It's just for testing purposes as I'm suspecting my internal SSD might be dying and I want to see if it runs stable from another drive. Don't have another internal drive at hand, if figured i'd give this a shot!

Did you have to do any special configuration to make it work?

 

[UtterDisbelief]

Thanks for the info!
It's just for testing purposes as I'm suspecting my internal SSD might be dying and I want to see if it runs stable from another drive. Don't have another internal drive at hand, if figured i'd give this a shot!

Did you have to do any special configuration to make it work?

No, nothing special - beyond having a properly configured and working USB sub-system. As I write this I'm using Catalina from an external USB3 caddy because I'm testing the new update.

When you install just make sure you point at the new destination, instead of leaving as default. Once done, don't try to boot from the main internal drive and its OC/CLOVER menu. Use your BIOS boot selector instead.