booting xp from external fw drive

[Hibbity]

is it possible to make it so you can boot xp from an external fw drive? I don't have enough space on my internal hd for everything.

[Mernak]

not supported by boot camp, but it might be possible to put a new HD in your comp, install OS X, boot camp, and Windows, then transfer the HD to an external enclosure and boot XP from it. I have no idea if that would actually work, but its the only way I can see it being done. ...or possibly could use the external drive to boot your computer into OS X install boot camp and it might fool the computer into thinking that the drive you booted from was an internal drive. OK thats it for ideas, tell me if any of them work, im interested now.

[Fleetwood Mac]

If you can get EFI to recognize the FW drive as bootable it wouldn't be a problem at all. It would be as simple as starting the computer with XP CD installing on the FW drive (I think XP supports this), and then choosing your OS by holding down the option key just as in a Bootcamp situation. As previously stated by many posters in other topics, Bootcamp only takes advantage of a firmware update which enabled DOS on Intel Macs, and is not required to run Windows.

Edit: It seems that due to limitations in Windows, this might not work without actual modification to windows. You might notice when windows is installing the screen flickers or that the mouse and keyboard might stop working for a bit. This is a nasty little quark XP has, it basically starts and stops various drivers for reasons unknown. Unfortunatley, this includes external dirves, be them FW or USB. Therefore, a normal installation is nearly impossible, because once you cut of the hard drive-where are the instructions to turn it back on going to come from? A similar topic in this very forum/category is available which may be helpful to you.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=191777