SL Series ThinkPad Laptops

[#1]

I bought a new hard drive for my SL-500 because I wanted to make a 64 bit system to test with. I swapped out my current 32 bit RTM Windows 7, put in the new drive, installed Windows 7 RC and then upgraded to the production 64 bit code (definitely a clean install). I don't think the SL-500 bay was designed for constant swapping of physical hard drives so I ordered a SATA external caddy for the 64 bit O/S. My question is can I run Windows 7 64 bit (speed degraded) by booting and running it from the external USB SATA drive? It seems physical drive swapping on the older ThinkPads was lesk risky--more hardy bays. I've used ThinkPads back to the 760CD days.

[#2]

I don't see why that would be a problem, as long as your computer supports usb booting.

[#3]

I tried this with the free Windows 7 Ultimate release (can't remember the build #) and it would not work when I put the drive in an external case and tried booting the machine.  Stated something like Windows 7 will not boot with external device.  I don't know if this was a limitation of the version I was using or if it was carried over with the version released to the general public in October.

Dan

[#4]

Why not just dual-boot from a single drive?