Bootcamp on External HD

kerbouchard · Member Joined: 06 Mar 2011 Posts: 78

Just called Applecare to do some preliminary research. They did not think this would work. I thought it was a no brainer. Put windows on a separate external HD to completely compartmentalize it from the rest of the system. I have a 1 terabyte drive I wanted to do this on. Anyone else try this or successfully do it?
_________________
2010 mac mini upgraded to 2.66mghz. Very First Mac Computer
Airport express and Airport extreme
4th gen ipod touch 32g

Bandit Bill · Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2011 2:30 pm Post subject:

I haven't tried this but you may be able to have a bootable copy of OS X on the external drive... boot from it... and then set-up bootcamp on the external drive. Yes you would still have a copy of OS X on the external drive, but that's no big deal just set the OS X partition size to a minimum on the external.

kerbouchard · Member Joined: 06 Mar 2011 Posts: 78

I do not remember if the mini came with a copy of OS X. Or can I copy it from internal HD to external HD. I really thought I would be able to just slap Windows on an externalHD. Sigh...
_________________
2010 mac mini upgraded to 2.66mghz. Very First Mac Computer
Airport express and Airport extreme
4th gen ipod touch 32g

Bandit Bill · Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2011 8:36 pm Post subject:

kerbouchard · Member Joined: 06 Mar 2011 Posts: 78

But then I am cloning all the stuff on my internal HD right? How do I get a clean copy of the OS?
_________________
2010 mac mini upgraded to 2.66mghz. Very First Mac Computer
Airport express and Airport extreme
4th gen ipod touch 32g

Lasopr · New Member Joined: 09 Jan 2012 Posts: 1

Bandit Bill · Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2012 5:28 pm Post subject:

If you have a hard drive that is formatted Mac OSX Extended with a GUID partition table. Your on the way.

Watch this video it is excellent
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNPfgufrVRA

saul · Senior Member Joined: 22 Mar 2008 Posts: 436 Location: PA

I thought that Bootcamp doesn't support Windows on USB or Firewire. You had to run some Windows hack. Windows 8 supposedly will support it.

For Windows 7 on USB it is a bit of work even on a PC:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_kTr0e-GB0

billb · Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 8:49 am Post subject:

Windows running from an external
USB or Firewire Hard Drive is not
supported. If you get it working
at all (and I don't think you will)
expect problems.
_________________
2011 Mac mini 2.7 GHz i7 with
16GB RAM, Samsung 512GB SSD
MacBook AIR 11 Inch
Mac mini, Model 1.1, 2.33 GHz C2D Proc
20" iMac G4 PPC

Bandit Bill · Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 12:05 pm Post subject:

I guess you'll have to run Parallels on the external drive then. If your goal is to compartmentalize Windows from your internal drive, you'll at least achieve this goal. I would personally just run Parallels on the internal or boot camp on the internal. What are your concerns?

MJL · Junior Member Joined: 28 Jun 2011 Posts: 38

I run OS X Lion on an external RAID and it also has VMware Fusion running Vista. On my internal SSD I am running only Windows 7, no OS X.

OS X wants a GUID to install, Windows wants a MBR to install. A hybrid disk can be created with using Lion BootCamp but by definition it is unstable and will give you grief when you are required to resize or restore.
(tested extensively here).

I never managed to get windows to run stable on an external disk.

Strangely enough I did never manage to get Parallels to work properly / stable and with VMware I did never look back. Support from Parallels was totally and utterly useless.


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