Can I use my external hard drive usb harddrive?

[gamemaker123825]

Hi, I have a USB 2tb external hard drive, can I install raspberry pi os on that, or is that to big for the raspberry pi to handle. Thanks

[default_user8]

You have to boot from the SD card but you can move the OS to a usb drive or hard drive, look here:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/forum/viewto ... ve#p472871

[klricks]

Yes the drive can be attached as a NAS drive and as noted much of the OS can be moved to the drive.
Does the drive have existing content on it?
How is the drive formatted?
If NTSF from a Windows computer then it will be very slow.
Much better to format with a Linux format such as ext4
A Linux format would be required to put the OS on it.

[GTR2Fan]

A Linux format would be required to put the OS on it.

Not necessarily a total hard drive reformat though, as I'm sure many users with an NTFS hard drive already nearly full of assorted media will be happy to hear.

I've been running my Pi OS from an NTFS formatted USB HDD for the past few days and all it required was...

NOTE: This is assuming that you have access to a Windows PC/Laptop.

1/ Install MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition and shrink the NTFS partition down to leave room for the OS to fit after it.

2/ Then use MiniTool to copy the Ext4 partition from the SD Card into the free space left on the HDD after the NTFS partition.

3/ Edit the cmdline.txt file on the SD card replacing 'root=/dev/mmcblk0p2' with 'root=/dev/sda2'.

4/ Plug the SD card and HDD back into the Pi, power it up, and off it happily trundles running the OS from the HDD.

[gamemaker123825]

Thanks I'm going to try that tonight, thanks everyone for answering my question.