Boot windows from an external firewire hdd

[xplor]

Is this possible?

I have a late 2008 non-unibody 15' MBP.

Im planning on removing my super drive, adding an 64gb ssd drive to the right hdd slot and buying a 500gb seagate with shock protection.

I was planning to put my old drive (stock 200gb hdd) on a firewire enclosure, and using it to boot windows, wich i will need to use autoCad.

Can i do this?


Pedro

 

[balamw]

You can certainly try.

Windows is designed not to boot from removable devices, and USB definitely does not work without significant effort.

Were you planning W7, XP or Vista?

B

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Maybe this can help you: http://guides.macrumors.com/Boot_Camp_Windows_XP_On_External_Drive

Btw, always have a look at the GUIDES section like shown below.

 

[alust2013]

You can, although it might be a little slow relative to your internal drive

 

[balamw]

Maybe this can help you: http://guides.macrumors.com/Boot_Camp_Windows_XP_On_External_Drive

Btw, always have a look at the GUIDES section like shown below.

The guide is the "effort" I was referring to in my post to get XP running via USB, and may not be appropriate here.

You can, although it might be a little slow relative to your internal drive

Are you saying that from personal experience? What I have seen over the years is that it may work for some combinations of Mac/enclosure/OS while it may not for others.

B

 

[xplor]

Thank you all for quick responses!

I have no specific version of windows i want to use, and given this new piece of information i am going for sure for the easiest, since i have licenses for all of them from my university(it wil not be vista though ).



I searched the forums and didnt find the guides. I will have a look at them, and if i still have question i'll post it!

Thank you all,

Pedro

[EDIT]

I've read e guide, and i have some questions.
What do i have to do to modify the windows instalation? The link was dead.
Do i make the instalation with no hard drive insidenthe mac, only with the external one pluged in?
The partions have to be made with OSX or on the windows install process?
By "replace" the hard drive to they mean, install a new one?(would imply that a drive was there during this instalation)

I've noted that they used win XP. Do you think it would work with 7?

 

[balamw]

I've read e guide, and i have some questions.
What do i have to do to modify the windows instalation? The link was dead.
Do i make the instalation with no hard drive insidenthe mac, only with the external one pluged in?
The partions have to be made with OSX or on the windows install process?
By "replace" the hard drive to they mean, install a new one?(would imply that a drive was there during this instalation)

I've noted that they used win XP. Do you think it would work with 7?

You can pull it from Google cache by searching for "ngine.de USB" and selecting the cached version.

Yes. You must remove the internal drive during install for this to work reliably. By replace they mean reinstall the removed drive.

The boot process for Vista and 7 is different and the same tricks don't work. I have seen various guides to make it work, but they don't seem as reliable as this approach. (They all come with many comments of "didn't work for me"

B

 

[kemperman]

need to use autoCad.


Pedro

I'm pretty sure there was a mac version announced in the past coue of months. You could save yourself a LOT of hassle and just wait for that, no?

 

[xplor]

I'm pretty sure there was a mac version announced in the past coue of months. You could save yourself a LOT of hassle and just wait for that, no?

I need it for the end of february, and will not need it after june. Since i'll be opening up the MBP and getting hard drives out, i will try it.

Any enclosure you'd like to recomend?