Possible to run the AAO without an internal drive?

I'm seriously considering getting an AAO, however there's one burning question I still have. Would it be possible to run the AAO after removing the internal drive (SSD or HDD) and not replacing it? I currently run Ubuntu off of an external USB hard drive, so I really have two questions:
1. Does the AAO support booting from USB (so I can stick with my external hard drive)
2. Does it supporrt booting from the SD card slots?
I've done a little research, and the only sloutions I've found are installing a GRUB loader onto the MBR of the internal drive (which would not work if I were to remove it) or a USB drive (which wouldn't be so bad).
Also a side note, what exactly is the difference between the two card slots? I've read one is an "expansion slot" and the other is simply a multi-card reader.

 

Yes.

Yes if you use GRUB. There is no SD boot in BIOS itself...

 

Where would I install the GRUB if I removed the internal drive? I assume I would need to install it on a USB drive?

 

Why would you like to remove the internal anyway? The 8G SSD is very much negligible both for its weight and capacity and you could just leave it there and ignore it instead of removing it, besides, when it comes to SD card linux installation, you may have to use it for GRUB, I guess.

 

Yes - in that case you need Pen Drive...

 

Frankly, it's my father who wants an SSD drive (what for, I don't know). He bought me the computer on the condition that if possible we remove the SSD drive and I work off something else (as I do anyway). I had no issue with this, so I agreed.

 

Well, in that case, things are getting more interesting

I think the best you can do is to use a USB stick. The BIOS of AAO natively supports booting from internals and USB devices, and somehow from network as well. I had dreamed of installing the OS completely on an inserted SD card, which has a higher write speed than the internal 8GB SSD, but the BIOS just refuses to take that and neither of the cardreaders could be recognized and listed in the boot device table. So the issue is clear. If the internal is removed, the only place for GRUB to be settled which can be accessed by the computer from the beginning of startup process is in some USB storage device. (I assume that you would not like to boot from the network

By the way, I like the embeded cardreaders, both of them, coz they are really fast. My 4G Class 2 TF card can all the way reach 24/14 MB/s for read/write speed in ATTO.

 

Is it possible to install Windows XP directly on an SD card or perhaps do something more tricky like installing them into the internal SSD and then transfer them to an SD card using an appropriate utility and boot them from there?

 

Instead of using SSD as the internal storage, use a flash drive instead.

Dismantle a flashdrive, then hook it up to one of the free usb ports on the back of the motherboard.
Flashdrive is both faster, more energy efficient and cheaper than the onboard SSD.