Hello everyone, I'm considering getting a couple of Mac Mini's for different tasks, but in both cases I want to run only Windows 8 Pro on both. The only option I'm aware of in running Windows natively is to dual boot. Is it possible to run Windows 8 WITHOUT keeping OS X? I don't want to waste the space on an SSD with an OS I won't use.
Next question that I have is: how is driver support in Mac Mini? I bought a MacBook Air for my wife with the same intent: running Windows 8 only (we tested it in dual boot though) and unfortunately the drivers provided by Apple were extremely basic. Stuff worked but no options to tweak settings (even things as simple as changing the two-finger scrolling direction in the track pad). Ended up getting her an X1 Carbon and that ended up being much nicer for her anyway.
I want Apple hardware, but not the software... am I looking to just have problems similar to what we had with the Air? Should I just look for a PC alternative instead?
TIA
I've done this with Windows 7, it is no problem.
What I suggest you do is:
- make a Time Machine backup to an external HDD but also leave some space for an OS X partition
- reboot into Time Machine and restore into the empty partition on the external HDD
- reboot into the restored partition on the external HDD
- see if you can use Bootcamp assistant to create the Windows install on the SSD
- if yes then no problem
- if no then buy Winclone (shareware)
- if no then boot from the internal OS X partition and use Bootcamp assistant from there
- install Windows
- boot into OS X on the external HDD
- install Winclone and make a backup of Windows
- wipe the SSD with the diskutility and create a MS DOS partition
- restore the Windows partition, follow instructions on the Winclone website
- boot into windows and use the Bootcamp utility in the system tray to ensure that your function keys are set properly and that you are booting the right partition (windows)
- remove the external HDD but keep it for backing up / restoring the Windows partition
Enjoy - these machines are very silent and take up next to no space.
PS no special drivers are required - the Bootcamp software that you need to download in the Bootcamp assistant has all the drivers. In fact I regard it as one of the easiest windows installs that there is.
Bootcamp has two purposes: One to create a "hybrid partition scheme" (OS X wants GUID and Windows MBR) and two to supply all the drivers. Extensive testing has shown me that if you only use windows on a hybrid disk everything is fine but if you use both OS's then you can have problems when you need to do a restore. (you may finish up having to do a restore of OS X and a fresh install of Windows). Often the problem starts with that one wants to resize a partition which is not the case if the whole disk is dedicated to a single OS.
PS 2 One of my machines is now dual booting with Windows 7, the other is now running Mountain Lion. Don't like Windows 8 and wanted to have automatic backups, time machine is a life saver for me and there is not something that is close to that under windows. Have been using Microsoft products since MS DOS 2.1 and Windows 3.1 but that is slowly coming to an end due to that I've retired and no longer have a compulsory need for Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint which have a hefty price. If the office software is included in the purchase price then Apple works out cheaper to own (also due to the higher resale value). Just like that at the rise of the PC's IBM went into decline so now Microsoft is starting to decline as well and I do not need/want the high manual maintenance activities associated with Windows.
