Is there any way I could install Windows 7/Vista/XP on my MacBook using Bootcamp, but install the Windows OS on an external harddrive instead of my internal drive? I hope this is making sense. Thank you.
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Boot Camp with an external harddrive
- Thread starter calebb0917
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use vmware fusion (you can get a 30 day trial) to install windows mount the vmware virtual drive then use winclone to make a disk image of the virtual drive. now restore the winclone image onto the external drive then boot up on your windows disk and restore the boot partition to be the external HD
http://twocanoes.com/winclone/
http://twocanoes.com/winclone/
Hey sorry but, can you please put this into simpler terms? Im not very informed about this kind of stuff so im a newbie. Haha
here's another way
Given that the "alternative method" for those who don't want to tear their Macs apart to disconnect the drive is consigned to archive.org I'll post my response here...
Decided to give it a go since I got the 120GB Mac Mini (wouldn't pay an extra £150 for components I can get for £65, on the principle of it) and haven't really got room to waste on Windows internally. Nor do I fancy the putty knife lark just yet.
The exact method outlined in the original tutorial didn't work for me, but for those who may be interested these were the steps I took to have Windows installed to a USB drive and just a 1GB internal partition for boot and swapfile are as follows. Bit of a faff, but worked in the end. (You can probably get away with a smaller internal partition but with only 1GB of RAM I decided to have the extra for swap).
BE WARNED, these are very rough steps that I have outlined for people who REALLY KNOW what they're doing. If you don't know what all this stuff means, don't try to follow it as I've made a lot of assumptions about your level of knowledge and it's easy to screw up, and I can't guarantee that I've detailed every step perfectly. I take no responsibility if you hose your OSX installation or lose your data, etc etc
- Use bootcamp to create a 5GB partition, the minimum it will go to.
- Format the external HDD on Windows, using the HP USB format tool (very easy to find on Google). Might not be necessary but I usually see this step listed for USB-Windows boots.
- Modify your XP to install to USB, as per the original tutorials. You usually need to extract some files using Winimage and hack them then re-inject the files and burn.
- Boot from the newly USB-enabled XP installation CD, which should be the SP2 version by the way.
- Hopefully setup will see the USB drive - format it as NTFS (quick is fine), and ignore the Boot Camp partition. If you can get the Boot Camp partition to format you might save some hassle later on, I'm not sure, but didn't manage it myself.
- Now XP will install to the external drive, and then reboot. At this point, when you try to resume it will fail with a Boot Error. If you'd managed to format the Boot Camp drive in the previous step (I remember this being a necessity in a normal install) it might work and save you some hassle here, but for me it failed.
- Boot into OS X, run the Boot Camp utility, and restore the drive (i.e. delete the Boot Camp partition).
- Open Disk Utility, and shrink OS X by 1GB (use the text box rather than the slider, it's easier). Apply the changes.
- Use the "+" to create a new partition, should be 1GB to match the free space you just made. In my case, Disk Utility sat there partitioning forever, so I abandoned it and restarted the process and it worked instantly the second time.
- Format the newly created partition as FAT.
- Boot off the XP CD again, and this time go to the Recovery Console. The Windows installation should be on D:
- Issue the command 'format c: /fs:ntfs /q' to reformat the newly created partition as NTFS. If in doubt, do a 'DIR C:\' to make sure you're formatting the right one!
- Issue the 'fixboot' command, which should restore the NT boot sector to the C: drive (1GB partition).
- Issue the command 'bootcfg /rebuild' and add the XP installation it detects.
- Exit to reboot. Oh noes, now NTLDR is missing! Time to boot into OS X again.
- Download MacFUSE and NTFS-3G, both very easy to Google. This enables NTFS write support. Reboot when it asks.
- Download the CD-R ISO image from www.tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm and mount it.
- Copy the various files to the 1GB boot drive (which should only contain boot.ini at this point), excluding boot.ini as you don't want to overwrite that. The main point is to get NTLDR and a couple of other files across.
- Reboot with option held down again, with the XP CD inserted, and boot from the Windows partition. Setup should hopefully resume!
- Now it works. There might be a few choices in the boot menu, so if you know what you're doing (not wise to follow these steps otherwise) then tidy up the boot.ini. The system will be drive D: and the boot partition drive C:, you can't win them all. Just ignore the whinging about drive C: being low on disk space - there's probably some way to disable it.
Could I just go to an Apple store and get them to help me? Would they be able to help me with software like VMWare Fusion?
Im so confused with all of this haha. I know there must be a way to do this, but i dont know what any of this means due to my inexperience. Well thank you all so much for your help. If anyone finds a simple and easy way to do this, please tell me. Thank you.
Basically, bootcamp will only work with the internal hard drive. That is Apple's standard method and the easiest.
The other method, with the complicated 20 steps, is simply a way to get around Apple's standard way. As you can see, it is not trivial and involves messing around with commands and all that.
There is no simple way to do it on the external drive. That is what everyone is saying.
The other method, with the complicated 20 steps, is simply a way to get around Apple's standard way. As you can see, it is not trivial and involves messing around with commands and all that.
There is no simple way to do it on the external drive. That is what everyone is saying.
Apologies that my first post opens an old thread, i've been reading all night after having an idea and not finding any answers. Along the original posters lines I want to create an external OSX/XP drive that will allow me to boot from either.
My reasons for this are as follows:
I want to play some games that are only available on pc on my mac.
I don't want to re image and install xp using bootcamp on my mac, that will only take up space for something thats pretty unimportant. I like my mac how it is now.
I've been reading about using winclone and the like to copy different bootable partitions accross to external drives.
I've read how bootcamp will only allow setup of XP and OSX on an internal drive. (and incidentally how this is a requirement of XP, not bootcamp or OSX...)
What I'm wondering (and intend to experiment with tomorrow) is using my other halfs Macbook pro, with its easily replacable 2.5" drive, to do all this internally.
(Using other halfs machine as mine is a 21" imac so removing hardrives is a little more of a "task" from what i've read)
My plans, simple as they are at the moment:
1. Remove perfectly good OSX booting drive, replace with mac formatted alternate drive.
2. Boot from OSX install disk, setup drive fresh through bootcamp with XP and OSX all in.
3. Remove alternate drive, replace original, mollify other half
4. Put shiny bootcamp OSX/XP drive in external enclosure, attempt to boot from it.
I'm posting really because I have no idea what will happen then. Obviously it could and probably will be a big fat nothing. But I have a friend who routinely boots from a clone of one machine on a separate other machine. I'm wondering what would be the difference between a clone of a partition on an external dive to a standard partitioned bootable drive becoming an external drive?
I guess I'm probably missing something really obvious. If anyone fancies telling me what it is I would appreciate it!
My reasons for this are as follows:
I want to play some games that are only available on pc on my mac.
I don't want to re image and install xp using bootcamp on my mac, that will only take up space for something thats pretty unimportant. I like my mac how it is now.
I've been reading about using winclone and the like to copy different bootable partitions accross to external drives.
I've read how bootcamp will only allow setup of XP and OSX on an internal drive. (and incidentally how this is a requirement of XP, not bootcamp or OSX...)
What I'm wondering (and intend to experiment with tomorrow) is using my other halfs Macbook pro, with its easily replacable 2.5" drive, to do all this internally.
(Using other halfs machine as mine is a 21" imac so removing hardrives is a little more of a "task" from what i've read)
My plans, simple as they are at the moment:
1. Remove perfectly good OSX booting drive, replace with mac formatted alternate drive.
2. Boot from OSX install disk, setup drive fresh through bootcamp with XP and OSX all in.
3. Remove alternate drive, replace original, mollify other half
4. Put shiny bootcamp OSX/XP drive in external enclosure, attempt to boot from it.
I'm posting really because I have no idea what will happen then. Obviously it could and probably will be a big fat nothing. But I have a friend who routinely boots from a clone of one machine on a separate other machine. I'm wondering what would be the difference between a clone of a partition on an external dive to a standard partitioned bootable drive becoming an external drive?
I guess I'm probably missing something really obvious. If anyone fancies telling me what it is I would appreciate it!
"Put shiny bootcamp OSX/XP drive in external enclosure, attempt to boot from it."
I want to do a similar thing - I am getting the newmodeus optical bay hard drive caddy (hopefully tomorrow) with an SSD that I plan on installing. I have XP on my old stock hard drive (which has since been removed from my computer and replaced with a 320 GB WD Scorpio Black), which I would like to place into an external enclosure to try and run XP from if possible. I also currently dual boot 10.6 and win7 64 bit installed on my WD drive.
I plan on making my new SSD my OSX boot drive (in the optical bay caddy), run win7 from the WD (which also contains a data drive partition for use with OSX), and also be able to boot from XP on my external - basically a ghetto triple boot. Slightly more complicated, but I'm gonna try.
I'll let you know how it goes as soon as I get all the parts. If anyone has any suggestions/recommendations, or would like to tell me that this is impossible, I'd appreciate it.
I want to do a similar thing - I am getting the newmodeus optical bay hard drive caddy (hopefully tomorrow) with an SSD that I plan on installing. I have XP on my old stock hard drive (which has since been removed from my computer and replaced with a 320 GB WD Scorpio Black), which I would like to place into an external enclosure to try and run XP from if possible. I also currently dual boot 10.6 and win7 64 bit installed on my WD drive.
I plan on making my new SSD my OSX boot drive (in the optical bay caddy), run win7 from the WD (which also contains a data drive partition for use with OSX), and also be able to boot from XP on my external - basically a ghetto triple boot. Slightly more complicated, but I'm gonna try.
I'll let you know how it goes as soon as I get all the parts. If anyone has any suggestions/recommendations, or would like to tell me that this is impossible, I'd appreciate it.
_