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Boot camp: Windows on internal drive - Boot OS X from USB?

L

LastLine

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 24, 2005
1,313
21
Hey all,

Now please, read before replying - as I know someone somewhere will assume I'm trying to install windows on a USB drive (I know that doesn't work :))

I'm going to buy a Mac Mini, but I feel that Apple's Hard drive prices are excessive, so I want to put Windows on my main internal drive, and use a USB drive to boot OS X from - is this possible, and if so how would I go about it?
 
4nr-

4nr-

macrumors regular
Oct 5, 2006
210
0
Göteborg, Sweden
If I understand you correctly, you want to install Windows as your primary OS, and have OS X installed on the side on an external HD.

If that's the case, it's not possible. To be able to install Windows on a Mac, you need boot camp + Windows installed on your mac startup disk, sorry.
 
A

Americanloti

macrumors member
Mar 2, 2006
47
0
You can always buy a internal HD somewhere else at a lower price. Opening a Mac Mini might seem a complicate task, but it's not that hard actually. Plus it won't void the warranty.
 
S

skippy911

macrumors regular
Nov 1, 2006
105
0
4nr- said:
If I understand you correctly, you want to install Windows as your primary OS, and have OS X installed on the side on an external HD.

If that's the case, it's not possible. To be able to install Windows on a Mac, you need boot camp + Windows installed on your mac startup disk, sorry.
Click to expand...

You can get windows installed on the internal mac mini drive and use the entire drive. Start up bootcamp, select the partition size, then start the windows installer, once windows gets to the point where it asks you to pick your partition you can remove the osx partitions and create one big windows partition. I believe that you need to keep the 200meg efi partition though. Google how to install vista on the mac or windows media center since they use the same route as I have described. Hope that helps.
 
L

LastLine

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 24, 2005
1,313
21
4nr- said:
If I understand you correctly, you want to install Windows as your primary OS, and have OS X installed on the side on an external HD.

If that's the case, it's not possible. To be able to install Windows on a Mac, you need boot camp + Windows installed on your mac startup disk, sorry.
Click to expand...

I don't really mind having OS X on the internal as it'll be my primary OS, I just want a somewhat bigger HDD than I can get inside a mini which is where the complication arrives. 160gb split between two Operating systems just doesn't go far. Does anyone have a working solution?



On another note? How do you open up a MM?
 
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