Install Windows 7 (BootCamp) externally on rMBP, is it possible?

TheIceman said:

I just prepared my USB 3.0 drive with help of this How-To:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/6991.windows-to-go-step-by-step.aspx

Just need my ordered MacBook Pro to arrive, so I can test it...

This seems to work very well on a MacBook Air:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lUC4rtSfP4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zqv9Ybm5kP0

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Those look like the older MacBook Air's without USB 3.0 support. Plus this was said to work on cMBP but not rMBP. However, something in me still believes it is possible to get Windows to boot from USB on a rMBP since the Windows install discs are converted to bootable USB drives by Boot Camp Assistant, so perhaps it does some funky magic with the Mac BIOS emulation to get it to work.

Has anyone tried converting a Windows installation to a DVD image and using the Boot Camp assistant to write it as a pretend install disc bootable USB drive? That might be something worth trying...

Sir Al said:

Has anyone tried converting a Windows installation to a DVD image and using the Boot Camp assistant to write it as a pretend install disc bootable USB drive? That might be something worth trying...

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Lots of people have done this, for the purpose of installing Windows.

But I haven't seen the partition map or contents of the resulting USB stick, so I don't know how they get USB boot to work.

It's entirely possible that they insert an EFI bootloader onto the USB stick, so it's initially an EFI boot, then switches to the CSM in a way that maintains the USB connection. All I can say is when I've tried to use conventional CSM booting with GRUB to Linux, the USB bus basically vanishes upon the CSM being activated.

Still waiting on my rMBP so I haven't tried this but I agree that it should be possible.

Load Windows 7 via bootcamp
Clone the bootcamp partition to an external drive (win clone)
Install rEFIt
Select the external windows partition from the rEFIt boot screen

bluenik25 said:

Still waiting on my rMBP so I haven't tried this but I agree that it should be possible.

Load Windows 7 via bootcamp
Clone the bootcamp partition to an external drive (win clone)
Install rEFIt
Select the external windows partition from the rEFIt boot screen

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I don't know that this is possible. What is possible, according to documentation, is the ability to boot the installer off USB flash media. There's no indication that it's possible to install onto and then boot from either USB flash or disks.

BTW rEFIt is no longer maintained. You should use rEFInd.

murphychris said:

I don't know that this is possible. What is possible, according to documentation, is the ability to boot the installer off USB flash media. There's no indication that it's possible to install onto and then boot from either USB flash or disks.

BTW rEFIt is no longer maintained. You should use rEFInd.

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I've done this method as well for my rMBP and no luck. It actually does start the windows boot but hangs likely secondary to lack of usb 3 native driver.

I'd like to think that Boot Camp 5.0 would contain USB 3 drivers, and embed them into the modified Windows installer ISO when it builds the USB flash drive. If that's not happening, Apple is behind...

Assuming the usb3.0 drivers are included (or thunderbolt, sorry, new again to a mac with a rmbp), couldnt we just install boot camp on a small partition for just Win7 OS (~45-50Gb to ensure everything would fit) and then use a usb3.0 or thunderbolt drive for all applications? Sure it wont be as snappy as the internal ssd, but then you could have all of your games, steam files, and other media ready to be used when you wanted to use Win7?

If this is stupid, please forgive me, the last mac I owned was the last ibook before the intel switch. I have never worked with bootcamp.

Aidic said:

Assuming the usb3.0 drivers are included (or thunderbolt, sorry, new again to a mac with a rmbp), couldnt we just install boot camp on a small partition for just Win7 OS (~45-50Gb to ensure everything would fit) and then use a usb3.0 or thunderbolt drive for all applications?

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Yes. If the disk is 2TB or larger, you will need to use GPT scheme, which Windows will recognize for non-boot disks.

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Come to think of it, I'd like to think any disk partition/formatting utility would automatically choose GPT for disks larger than 2TB. I know Disk Utility on Mac OS X does this, and even disables MBR. But I'm not sure about how smart Windows is about this.

I am trying to do the same thing. I just tried putting my HDD from my old macbook, which has win 7 bootcamp on it in an external USB 2 drive and boot it up on my retina macbook.
It actually seemed to work at first and got to the weird windows loading screen with all the colours, but then suddenly a bluescreen appeared saying

"A problem has been detected and windows has been **** down to prevent demage to your computer...

[... lots of BS about viruses and checking HDD ...]

Technical information: *** STOP: 0x0000007B (0x80786B58, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)"

I tried booting it again and windows asked me whether I want to boot normally or boot into recovery, which might fix the problem.
When I selected recovery it actually booted successfully into it and asked me for the keyboard layout, but when I clicked next I got the error "This version of System Recovery Options is not compatible with the version of Windows you are trying to repair. Try using a recovery disc that is compatible with this version of Windows"

It looks like windows HAS the ability to boot, but might be missing something.

What MIGHT work is try to start installing windows while having the HDD internally in an old macbook and when the first phase of the install is done when it is copying all the required files and reboots, take the HDD out and boot it externally on the rMBP to finish the install.

Hopefully windows selects which drivers to include and so on in the second phase and you can finish the install on the rMBP and then boot it.

I would also recommend to use an USB 2 drive just to be safe for the install.

I might try it this weekend, but I use windows only once or twice a year and don't really want to put so much effort into trying it out. So maybe one of you guys is more motivated to try this than me.

Kimcha said:

I just tried putting my HDD from my old macbook, which has win 7 bootcamp on it in an external USB 2 drive and boot it up on my retina macbook. It actually seemed to work at first..

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Very interesting. This implies some newer Macs must have a CSM capable of USB booting.

when I clicked next I got the error "This version of System Recovery Options is not compatible with the version of Windows you are trying to repair. Try using a recovery disc that is compatible with this version of Windows"

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Yes there are problems moving Windows from one CPU family to another. Your older computer was probably CoreDuo or Core2Duo and your new one is i5 or i7.

What MIGHT work is try to start installing windows while having the HDD internally in an old macbook

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I doubt that will work for reasons mentioned above.

Hopefully windows selects which drivers to include and so on in the second phase and you can finish the install on the rMBP and then boot it.

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It may be a kernel issue not a driver issue.

I might try it this weekend, but I use windows only once or twice a year and don't really want to put so much effort into trying it out. So maybe one of you guys is more motivated to try this than me.

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Nope, I only use it in a VM. CSM and MBR boot is a PITA.

Actually my old MBP is an i5 from last year and the rMBP is i7. I don't know whether Sandy vs Ivy bridge makes a difference though.

If you look at this thread: http://att.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1414769

Specifically those posts:
http://att.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=15406975&postcount=18
http://att.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=15408656&postcount=24

Someone got it working, but as soon as he boots into OS X, something gets corrupted and he can no longer boot into windows.

Kimcha said:

Actually my old MBP is an i5 from last year and the rMBP is i7. I don't know whether Sandy vs Ivy bridge makes a difference though.

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I don't know. Possibly.

Someone got it working, but as soon as he boots into OS X, something gets corrupted and he can no longer boot into windows.

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Different situation in that a.) it's the same hardware doing the installation and booting that installation; b.) totally different interface, Thunderbolt vs USB.

I have no idea what's causing his corruption, it seems peculiar to me. I'd like to think Seagate has heard of this already, whether they have a work around or not I don't know.

I'm thinking of avoiding all this hassle and hoping someone would come out selling the 512GB or 768GB version of the solid state drive the rMBP has so that I could upgrade it. If the 512GB drive could've be gotten at even half Apple's price, it might be a good upgrade. I'm at 85GB free with a full BootCamp partition and that's not including Logic Studio with a bunch of Samples that I want to install (might have to go on the external drive).

After the upgrade, if there was an adapter to plug the 256GB solid state drive into a SATA port, it'd be a great boot drive for another computer.

Even easier to avoid, use a VM. The virtual disk only takes up as much space as it actually uses, you don't have to reserve a bunch of extra (for two operating systems).

After my rMBP has finally arrived, I also did some Tests with Windows to go...
After preparing the USB 3.0 Drive, I bootet it, pressed the "Alt" Key, selected "EFI Boot" and voila it booted into the Windows 8 configuration with "Preparing your PC for the first start".

BUT then I got an Error telling me that something went wrong with my installation and I've to start over again...

So it seems that the "Boot" itself works just fine ... there just seems to be a driver Issue or something like that... will try it again as soon as the final Windows 8 Version arrives.

@Kimcha: Have you tried editing the USB Values in the registry to enable USB2.0 Boot in Windows 7? The Problem is, that Windows 7 "Basic Installation" disables your USB drive for a short ammount of time during the boot process.. .this is why you are getting the error message!

TheIceman said:

I bootet it, pressed the "Alt" Key, selected "EFI Boot" and voila it booted into the Windows 8 configuration with "Preparing your PC for the first start".

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This is UEFI booting Windows 8. Not CSM-BIOS booting. It's important to distinguish between the two methods because the bootloader behaviors are completely different, as are the disk partitioning requirements.

USB booting via Mac's EFI has been possible for a long time (maybe since the beginning). It's USB booting with the CSM that's new, if in fact it's now possible on some hardware.

on the apple official community someone said its doable to install a bootcamp with smallest partition possible then install a second windows on a thunderbolt harddrive, uses windows build in boot loader to passthrough all the issue.

jisongkun said:

on the apple official community someone said its doable to install a bootcamp with smallest partition possible then install a second windows on a thunderbolt harddrive, uses windows build in boot loader to passthrough all the issue.

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Do you have a link to that thread? Does sound like a hassle though.

Has no one figured this out yet? I have a rMBP (256GB) Wouldn't want to partition my drive. Booting from an external drive would be great.

If I only assign a small amount (like 30/40gb) to bootcamp for Windows 7, will I still be able to read an external drive when in Windows to move files around?

so let me understand this

Windows 7 does not support native usb booting
Windows 8 does correct?

I am trying to have a bootable windows system where windows is installed on a usb3 external drive

I should have no issues if using windows 8?

Has anyone got this running ok?

It looks like UEFI + Windows 8 or Windows 7 + hacks might work.

However, I like having the Windows partition on the laptop after having it like this for a while. It can be a hassle to hook up the external drive, and being able to launch Bootcamp in a VM (Parallels) is very nice.

So I think I'll go with the OWC Aura Pro and upgrade to a 480GB internal drive that's even faster than Apple's. Right now it's like $550, so I'll wait until I really need it or it goes below $300.