I have a hard disk with Windows which I seldom used. I was thinking of putting it in an enclosure so that I can use the cpu as a linux box. And when I need to use Windows I'll just configure the BIOS to boot on external hard disk, that is Windows.

I know that Debian when installed over it (Windows) will put the grub on mbr thus, booting the external hard disk is possible.

What I want to ask then, is how much disk space will I allocate during partitioning for the no graphical interface Debian.

5Gb should be way more than enough if all you are doing is booting with it.

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Windows doesn't want you to run windows on a usb drive. It has been hacked however and takes a bit of time to do it. Not really a newbie task and not really in agreement with how this forum supports uses.

Might be easier to use a P2V app (windows provides one even) to convert that install to a virtual machine. Then it makes no difference where the file is as long as you have support for the size of the file(files).

You can also take that drive and run it under a vm directly but you'd have to fix the hal before it will boot.

You could dd the drive to a file and run it in qemu. (again you'd have to repair the hal)

In all of that it may ask to re-activate unless you use a P2V app. VMware has a free app too that I think corrects the hal and activation deal.

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I think I will have to try my original plan first. Ofcourse, on my free time --- and that I don't know of yet.

If that doesn't work , I'll dare not go with jefro's suggestion.