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SD card slot suitability

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DannySmurf

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 7, 2005
628
0
Couple of questions for anyone who may have tried this. I'd like to put Windows on my new MBA (2011, i5, 256GB). The SD card slot is sitting there unused, so I'm wondering... would I be able to put Windows 7 on a 32GB SD card? Would that even be bootable? And fast enough for general use?

I could always partition the internal drive, but if there's some other avenue, I'd rather keep that whole drive for OSX.
 
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LeakedDave

macrumors regular
Jun 26, 2011
211
11
DannySmurf said:
Couple of questions for anyone who may have tried this. I'd like to put Windows on my new MBA (2011, i5, 256GB). The SD card slot is sitting there unused, so I'm wondering... would I be able to put Windows 7 on a 32GB SD card? Would that even be bootable? And fast enough for general use?

I could always partition the internal drive, but if there's some other avenue, I'd rather keep that whole drive for OSX.
Click to expand...

Some say it will run hellishly slow off an SD Card but I am going to try.
 
alust2013

alust2013

macrumors 601
Feb 6, 2010
4,779
2
On the fence
SD cards are limited to USB 2, and are slower than you want a boot drive to begin with. It is possible, but not something you want to use for anything more than basic tasks.
 
Y

yongren

macrumors regular
Jan 19, 2011
117
0
Another option would be to install Windows on your main drive along with Lion, and use the spare 32GB card for file storage.

EDIT: Saw the last line of your post. I still think this is the best option though, if you really need to have Windows...
 
T

technopimp

macrumors 6502a
Aug 12, 2009
645
219
Just for fun I spun up an Ubuntu VM under Parallels on a 32GB SDHC card. Was not even usable (didn't time it, but took over 5 minutes to boot). Took over a minute to launch an application.

With your 256GB SSD you have more than enough space unless you have a TON of application. I have a 20GB Parallels volume for Windows 7 and I think I have ~10GB "free".
 
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