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Thunderbolt enclosure for windows 8

G

gazing

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 10, 2014
52
0
Hi everyone,
I just bought a refurb rmbp (2.6/512/8)
And I realised Ill need windows for a few odd jobs and maybe using apps like FL studio 10.
I like to have all my stuff portable so I'd really like it to be bus powered obviously.For a start ive done research but I d much rather not have the seagATE TB adapter as It will not run my minimum requirement of 400/450 mb/s . Im going to get an 840 pro 256gb SSD and since there are no other enclosures out there which are bus powered .Maybe I could tear out one of these 3 drives:

Lacie: http://store.apple.com/uk/product/H...erbolt-usb-3-hard-drive?fnode=5f&fs=s=priceLH

G drive mobile: http://store.apple.com/uk/product/H...d-usb-30-1tb-hard-drive?fnode=5f&fs=s=priceLH


Freecom mobile: http://www.dabs.com/products/freeco...Hard Drives - External Hard Drives&origin=pla

Or maybe even the buffalo ministation:

Few questions: Has anyone tried to do this with any of the drives above/any threads out there?

And do they all have sata 3 interfaces which could support transfers of above 400 mb/s

Obviously Id rip out the drive and put my samsung ssd in but I suppose my final question is would anything like this even work!
 
gazing said:
Hi everyone,
I just bought a refurb rmbp (2.6/512/8)
And I realised Ill need windows for a few odd jobs and maybe using apps like FL studio 10.
I like to have all my stuff portable so I'd really like it to be bus powered obviously.For a start ive done research but I d much rather not have the seagATE TB adapter as It will not run my minimum requirement of 400/450 mb/s . Im going to get an 840 pro 256gb SSD and since there are no other enclosures out there which are bus powered .Maybe I could tear out one of these 3 drives:

Lacie: http://store.apple.com/uk/product/H...erbolt-usb-3-hard-drive?fnode=5f&fs=s=priceLH

G drive mobile: http://store.apple.com/uk/product/H...d-usb-30-1tb-hard-drive?fnode=5f&fs=s=priceLH


Freecom mobile: http://www.dabs.com/products/freeco...Hard Drives - External Hard Drives&origin=pla

Or maybe even the buffalo ministation:

Few questions: Has anyone tried to do this with any of the drives above/any threads out there?

And do they all have sata 3 interfaces which could support transfers of above 400 mb/s

Obviously Id rip out the drive and put my samsung ssd in but I suppose my final question is would anything like this even work!
Click to expand...

Be very careful. I hosed two Crucial M4 SSDs using them with the Seagate TB adapter. Have a look at my posts in this thread.

I know you are not planning on using a Seagate TB adapter, but Crucial's warning
could apply to any bus powered device, and my experience of putting a 128Gb M4 in a USB enclosure was not pristine, (it worked but there were SMART errors).
 
Ok. Out of my listed drives which one would offer the fastest speeds?
 
gazing said:
Ok. Out of my listed drives which one would offer the fastest speeds?
Click to expand...

I doubt very much whether anyone could tell you that, since you are dismantling the product and putting an independent SSD instead.

In my opinion any difference in speed would be small, provided they are SATA 3 which everything seems to be these days, but the specs don't actually give this.

I know Lacie Rugged enclosures (used to be) easy to take apart, (just peel off the rubber) but don't know about the other two. Having taken many enclosures apart in my time I know some are much easier to do than others, and some are impossible without breaking tabs or other damage. The Freecom and GTech don't seem to have any screws so you will have to spring them apart.

Other factors, like how much shielding is present, and detail of the power supply could be important but no way of knowing until you are committed.

You may get lucky but be prepared for disappointment. There may be a good reason why manufacturers aren't offering what you are trying to construct.
 
Yeah that's a really good point .
Wondering whether the lacie drive with samsung ssd would be fine for boot camp in windows alongside some light music production...

Also can boot camp run on USB 3 enclosures?
 
gazing said:
Yeah that's a really good point .
Wondering whether the lacie drive with samsung ssd would be fine for boot camp in windows alongside some light music production...

Also can boot camp run on USB 3 enclosures?
Click to expand...

Not sure what you mean by "alongside some light music production". Bootcamp needs its own partition.

You are planning to put it on an external Thunderbolt drive (not USB) and Googling "bootcamp on external thunderbolt drive" suggests it can be done. Booting Windows off USB is more problematical. You would be better asking in the Windows on Mac section.

Having used Bootcamp and Parallels I can say Parallels is a lot less hassle in the long run, and is much faster than people think. Only serious gamers really need Bootcamp IMO.
 
I think I just like the idea of having all my mac stuff on a drive and windows on another !

Would you expect a samsung + lacie setup to work well with windows plus fl studio 10 on it ( windows only music software)
 
gazing said:
I think I just like the idea of having all my mac stuff on a drive and windows on another !

Would you expect a samsung + lacie setup to work well with windows plus fl studio 10 on it ( windows only music software)
Click to expand...

No idea! All I can repeat is that what you are doing is far from risk free.

You can set up Parallels to be pretty much independent from Mac and from what you say Bootcamp might be overkill. Parallels is elastic, with Bootcamp you have to fix the size in advance, and the while it can be made bigger or smaller later, the forums are full of people who have come unstuck doing this.

I know nothing about FL Studio 10, or any music software.
 
Ok thanks for really useful help anyway .
I'll look at both options over the next few days...
 
I run win8 for a few programs that only run on Windows - primarily specialized swim meet software. I wouldn't want to carry along an external HD and do use the software away from home.
I have a small bootcamp partition running with VMware and it's perfect for what I need.
I backup to my Mac partition and use TimeMachine to back that up.
 
snaky69 said:
AFAIK you cannot run windows on an external drive at all.
Click to expand...

I believe you can on Thunderbolt...that's what my Googling showed.

----------
lsh said:
I have a small bootcamp partition running with VMware and it's perfect for what I need.
I backup to my Mac partition and use TimeMachine to back that up.
Click to expand...

I assume you have a Bootcamp partition which you can access either by booting directly from it, or through VMWare. (I know Parallels can do this so I expect VMWare can as well).

Time Machine will be backing up all the Mac partition including VMWare, but not the actual Bootcamp partition.

Backing up Bootcamp is one its problems (Winclone is the best way), and is one of the reasons I prefer a pure Parallels (or VMWare) Virtual Machine these days. A Parallels or VMWare virtual machine is backed up by Time Machine, but may use up your Time Machine capacity rather quickly.
 
Last edited:
It's Possible

It is possible. I used this setup for less than two weeks using the Seagate Thunderbolt adapter and a 256GB Samsung 840 Pro.

You still have to create a small (<300MB) FAT32 partition on your internal hard drive for the bootloader, but the full Windows install can reside on the external SSD in my experience (using 2011 iMac).
 
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