Installing Windows 8 on an External SSD Guide

BleepToBleep said:

Hi all,
Since I encountered quite some issues during my installation of Windows on an external drive, but I succeeded in the end, I have made another very detailed guide on how to proceed, step by step:
http://bleeptobleep.blogspot.fr/2013/02/mac-install-windows-7-or-8-on-external.html
It's really straight forward in definitive, once you know what to do.
Hope this will be helpful for some people out here

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When using a VirtualMachine (VMware Fusion) to prep the target drive (Thunderbolt on Seagate adapter), how do you make the external Thunderbolt drive attach to the VM so that you can do the partitioning and formatting?

Mine does not see it, and I am unable to mount it to the VM.

EDIT:
I cannot see the external drive with it mounted to either a GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter or a GoFlex USB-3.0 adapter (gave me a driver error) from the Virtual Machine Windows 7. However, when I attached the GoFlex USB-3.0 adapter to a USB-2.0 hub, forcing a USB-2 connection, it mounted to the Windows VM and I was able to proceed with the partitioning, formatting, and imagex configure. Now to reboot with the drive on the Thunderbolt and attempt finishing the installation.

Yeah I had the same issue when I used VMWare Fusion, so I plugged the drive to a USB 2 hub and that solved the issue. I read that Parallels Desktop works better with USB3 and Thunderbolt but I did not try it.

I got everything working up until the point where I reboot with the prepared drive connected to perform the Windows installation. Once I do that, I get the startup screens of Windows 7 where the colored blobs start to fly together, followed by a very-quick blue screen, then a system reboot.

I'm trying to install Windows 7 X64 using an external laptop-sized hard drive in an old Kingston USB2 enclosure (figured I'd try on that before investing in a USB3 or Thunderbolt enclosure).

I also tried to boot to SafeMode, but it had the same result. Think the enclosure matters? Not quite sure what to do now.

This is on a new 2012 iMac w/ 3tb fusion.

Thanks for the guide - I feel like I'm very close.

I really can't tell where this could be coming from, it might be the fancy USB2 enclosure, not sure... Do you have any way of testing with another drive or with another enclosure, like USB3 or Thunderbolt?

BleepToBleep said:

I really can't tell where this could be coming from, it might be the fancy USB2 enclosure, not sure... Do you have any way of testing with another drive or with another enclosure, like USB3 or Thunderbolt?

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Nope. I guess I might have to order a different drive to test it out, but first I'm going to try it with some alternate Windows images to see if that has any impact. Unfortunately, the blue screen-flash is too fast to see any specifics of what's going wrong.

maybe take a video of it then play it slow motion

BleepToBleep said:

maybe take a video of it then play it slow motion

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I'll give that a shot. I'm guessing it's probably the usual memory address kind of stuff they flash on most bluescreens.

Came back with error-code "STOP 0x0000007B"

With some research (reference), it looks like the problem can be attributed to a bunch of potential things: virus (unlikely considering it's a clean newly formatted/partitioned drive), device driver issues (possible), or INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE (possible).

So it seems the problem is most-likely some incompatibility of the drive/enclosure I'm using with the iMac and I'm in the market for an alternate drive/enclosure with which to get this working.

I know you went with the Lacie Rugged drive - Seems like an expensive drive for what you get and it's got mixed reviews, so I'm not sure that's the drive I'm going to go with despite its dual-interfaces.

Before buying a new drive, have you tried running the CHKDSK /F command from the VM or a PC? If there are corrupted sectors on the drive, it would explain why you are getting this issue.
Then regarding the various external drive models, the Lacie Rugged I have is not an SSD, and it was in the same price range as other drives with the same capacity and connectors. Of course for better performance you could use an SSD of 128 or 256 GB, depending on your needs in Windows software.

I haven't tried chkdsk, but I'll run a scan on the drive tonight and see if it finds any issues. It's an older drive (not what I intend to use as my final configuration) so it's possible that it may come back with some issues. Thanks for the suggestion - and the video-capture worked great once I ran the video through SLOPRO to stretch out the screen flash.

Wow great guide. But then is it possible to keep windows 7 using bootcamp and windows 8 on an external thunderbolt and boot to any of the 3 OS? (ML, W7 and W8)

jMrkz said:

Wow great guide. But then is it possible to keep windows 7 using bootcamp and windows 8 on an external thunderbolt and boot to any of the 3 OS? (ML, W7 and W8)

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Should be - You'd just choose what partition to boot to upon bootup.

yes you could have both windows 7 and OS X on your internal drive, and Windows 8 on an external drive. You should be able to boot from any of these with this method.

BleepToBleep said:

yes you could have both windows 7 and OS X on your internal drive, and Windows 8 on an external drive. You should be able to boot from any of these with this method.

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When I tried this I had W7 on bootcamp, then I install W8 on a thunderbolt drive following this guide and it W8 worked but it looks like it W8 took over the W7 boot files. When I started and press the option key I have 2 windows boot options but both take me to W8. I can see the W7 files when I boot to ML.

Any idea what I might be doing wrong?

With this method it is impossible that the Win 8 boot took over the Win7 boot, because everything is installed on an external drive, nothing is on the same drive as windows 7. I think to boot Windows 7 you would have to use the bootcamp boot drive selection then reboot without pressing ALT. Let me know if this works.

No luck with the chkdsk - came back clean. I've ordered a HGST Touro Mobile Pro 1tb external USB 3.0 drive to try with different/newer hardware.

fingers crossed...

jMrkz said:

When I tried this I had W7 on bootcamp, then I install W8 on a thunderbolt drive following this guide and it W8 worked but it looks like it W8 took over the W7 boot files. When I started and press the option key I have 2 windows boot options but both take me to W8. I can see the W7 files when I boot to ML.

Any idea what I might be doing wrong?

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Is it completely booting into Win8 with both selections? Win8 should detect Win7, and have a boot menu on startup that allows the selection of either OS. When I installed Win8 on my PC that already had Win7 on another drive, I found that Win8 took over the boot process by putting it's bootmgr file on the Win 7 drive, but did offer a boot menu after it loaded. To fix this I used the Win7 DVD and did a boot repair, then everything functioned normally, with Win7 presenting the boot menu immediately. Win8 loads before presenting the boot menu so that it can start immediately if chosen as the boot OS, but this causes a delay if you want Win7.

Each Windows should see itself as drive C: and the other as drive D:.

An excellent program for setting up multi-boot options, and solving boot issues is EasyBCD. It's free for home use.

http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/

Can you attach VMware "Fusion" or Parallels to the bootable Windows image on the external thunderbolt drive with either of the Windows installation methods discussed in this thread? This allows using the same Windows image for both bootable access and virtual-machine access.

The 2 methods being the one presented by "Superangel Mac" which uses a small boot manager partition on the internal boot drive ... and the one presented by "BleepToBleep" which installs totally externally with no modifications to the internal OS X drive.


thanks ...

BleepToBleep said:

yes you could have both windows 7 and OS X on your internal drive, and Windows 8 on an external drive. You should be able to boot from any of these with this method.

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OK ... having a triple boot system sounds great ...

I have OS X and Windows-7 on my internal iMac drive, and am trying to use your method to install Windows-8 on an external GoFlex Thunderbolt SSD drive. I put the drive temporarily on a GoFlex USB-3 adapter, plugged into a USB-2 hub to force a USB-2 connection so my VMware Windows-7 VM would see it as mentioned above. I completed the partitioning, formatting, and installing without any problems and am ready to boot my external drive for installation.

I put the drive back on the GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter and restarted my iMac with the alt/option key pressed to get the boot menu. I see 2 "Windows" icons and a "EFI Boot" icon in addition to the OS X and Recovery icons. Selecting either of the Windows icons results in booting my internal Windows-7 environment. Selecting the "EFI Boot" icon shows the Windows-8 "blue window on a black screen" , but it proceeds no further.

I can't disable my internal Windows-7 installation without totally deleting it, which I obviously don't want to do at this point. I want to experiment with Windows-8 on the external drive, as when I had previously installed it (both externally and internally), it developed a fatal "CACHE-MANAGER" crash which I was unable to find a solution to (possibly a driver issue with the 680MX video).

Anyone have a suggestion on how to resolve this issue?


Thanks,
-howard

oh that's strange. To be honest I did not try to have both Windows 7 and 8 at the same time. I just tried these 2 installations separately, both from the external drive. So I am sorry but I won't be able to help you here...

BleepToBleep said:

oh that's strange. To be honest I did not try to have both Windows 7 and 8 at the same time. I just tried these 2 installations separately, both from the external drive. So I am sorry but I won't be able to help you here...

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Have you tried to use the external Windows installation as the host for either Parallels or VMware for virtual machine access to the same installation?

No I haven't. I'm not an expert in Virtual Machines but actually I think they work quite differently from native Windows installations (drivers and so on). There is the possibility to import an existing Windows installation in VMWare Fusion, but I think this would just create a new VM from it (sort of copy of the existing Windows install).

BleepToBleep said:

No I haven't. I'm not an expert in Virtual Machines but actually I think they work quite differently from native Windows installations (drivers and so on). There is the possibility to import an existing Windows installation in VMWare Fusion, but I think this would just create a new VM from it (sort of copy of the existing Windows install).

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Both Parallels and VMware allow you to run a bootable Windows installation as a VM as well, without importing and thus taking up another 30GB of disk space. It works great with every installation I have had, but I forgot to test it out while I had a external Windows installed with your methods. I was concerned if VMware could find it (externally) without any boot partition on the OS X drive.

-howard

Bummer. No luck with the new external drive. Seems to be crashing in the same spot on install. If I re-try, it gives me the "Safe Boot" option, which lets me see the specific drivers it's loading when it hangs/crashes/reboots. It's something called disk.sys that's causing the issue (or at least that's the last driver shown on the screen).

From what I've found online, it appears to be some sort of hardware conflict with the system that causes the crash. I've tried disabling WiFi and Bluetooth (plugged in a USB keyboard instead) but that didn't help. I've also tried each of the USB ports for the external drive, but that didn't help. Beyond that - I'm not sure what else I can really tweak on the iMac to increase my chances of a successful install.

I tried the same (new) external drive on my 2011 MBP, but it's not even discovered on bootup - I see my main drive, and the Recovery partition, but that's all.

I did have one question - does the Windows install need to take place while connected to the iMac? Would it be possible to boot from the external drive on a Windows PC ... perform the install onto that drive, then connect it to the iMac to finish up the instal process with the Bootcamp drivers?

If not - I guess I'm screwed. I suppose 10.8.3 is supposed to fix the 3tb Bootcamp issue - but I'm still not sure whether that'll allow me to install Windows to the external drive like I was hoping. Alternately, I suppose I could try a Windows 8 install - but I'm not really looking to spend any more money on Windows licenses than I need to considering I'd only use it for a few games and I'm already $100 in the hole for this new external drive that didn't solve my problem.

Thanks for the help and any advice you can provide.