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dextro

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 22, 2008
22
0
Barcelona
Has anyone managed to boot (any OS) from a USB flash drive (or HD)? MAybe using rEFIt?

Regards
 

jimboutilier

macrumors 6502a
Nov 10, 2008
647
42
Denver
Just yesterday I booted my new MBA revc from a flash drive to do a fresh os x install. It worked great.

To create it I put the osx boot DVD my uMB and used disk utility to restore the DVD image to the 8gb flash drive.

Then boot the air with the option key held down and select the flash drive.

It was very fast and easy!
 

dextro

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 22, 2008
22
0
Barcelona
Just yesterday I booted my new MBA revc from a flash drive to do a fresh os x install. It worked great.

To create it I put the osx boot DVD my uMB and used disk utility to restore the DVD image to the 8gb flash drive.

Then boot the air with the option key held down and select the flash drive.

It was very fast and easy!

Have you tried to do the same with Windows in a bootcamp partition?

Cheers
 

jimboutilier

macrumors 6502a
Nov 10, 2008
647
42
Denver
Have you tried to do the same with Windows in a bootcamp partition?

Cheers

I'm afraid not. In theory restoring a windows boot cd to a flash drive should do the same thing but I have not tried it so could not say for sure.

Thus far I've stuck with VM's to do Windows and Linux as I really don't need the extra performance bootcamp offers.
 

Abyssgh0st

macrumors 68000
Jan 12, 2009
1,888
8
Colorado
I was also wondering about this, because I want to have Windows on a small external drive, and wanted to know how easy this is if it is possible.
 

silencer88

macrumors member
Jul 14, 2009
69
0
Windows generally cannot be installed onto a USB drive due to the way it handles USB devices on startup.

However, Windows XP can be installed on a USB drive with some hacking. See here. It's a little involved. I assume the drive would appear as a standard Bootcamp drive (and boot properly) after this process, but I've never tried.

I'm not sure about Vista and 7. I think they have the same USB issues as XP, and there might be a similar "hacky" solution.
 
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