How to run boot camp on a external hard drive

[johnodd4]

Well this question has come up and i have the answer on how to run boot camp on a external drive kinda of let me explain

my sistuation is this i have a mac mini with a 60 gig hard drive and im limited in space i tried running mac os x on a external drive doesn't work worth spit but i decided to post this anyways

so i found a way to run boot camp and run windows without any problems using a simple setup

here is what you need

1.a external drive 250 gigs or bigger no limitations on external drives in mac os x as long as you do not boot from it i will explain in this forum

2.mac bootcamp my recommendation is download the latest version and use a older driver disk for mac bootcamp and then install the 1.1 drivers then install the old driver disk this gives you th keyboard driver and the good working drivers for windows

3.carbon copy cloner needed to copy your os from one drive to another


ok here is what to do

1.go online download carbon copy cloner

2.once carbon copy cloner is downloaded install then run you will need the administrator password to clone the drive click the lock and insert password once you do this select clon it will clone the entire hard drive to the external do no worry let me explain

you need to backup before doing this this is whay you need to make sure the hard drive is big enough

3.after the clone has been made here is what you do


4. disconnect the external hard drive

5. the external is now a backup for the first half of this mod

6.start boot camp dedicate 20 gigs to boot camp leaving enough space for mac os x and the applications you will need it later

7. install windows xp using bootcamp

8. activaite windows xp

9. reboot the macintosh and boot mac os x

10.reconnect the external hard drive once mac os x has booted

11.now go into startup disk and tell the mac to boot from the external drive

12 once the computer restarts on the external drive go into the primary hard drive where mac os x was at and format the internal hard drive then reboot the computer holding the option key you will notice you will be able to boot windows xp from a external installation of mac os x


now i know this sounds stupid because??? why would you give 20 gigs to windows it doesn't even leave enough space for windows applications well there is another way to do this as well if you want to run a whole bunch of windows applications

here is another way

before you clone the external drive go into disk utility and select the external drive then select partition then give half of the external drive to a fat 32 partition and give the rest to mac os x so that when you boot into windows you have space on the external drive to install windows apps and then you also have space for mac os x apps

warning because boot camp beta is a beta version it doesn't like certain external drives in windows and will cause start up errors including the blue screen of death simple fix do not turn on the external drive until windows has loaded then run you applications

well after writing all of this i hope this helps you all

thanks and good macing