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BootCamp + External Drive

I hate to be a pessimist, but even if you could take your hard drive out, it still might not work (speaking from experience! 🙂 And also a little frustration...)

Perhaps Apple will offer support for this method in later releases? A boy can dream?!!!
 
I would like to run windows on an external or separate drive so that if or when it gets corrupted with viruses and the like it won't mess up my primary drive. Hmmm, I'll have to search to see if there's a more up to date solution for this query. Can anyone help me??
 
I think it's something that could do with being looked at very seriously by coders and programmers and people 'in the know' about this sort of thing, not only because it's a really cool way to use BootCamp, but also as there's loads of tutorials on how to achieve an external Windows drive with BootCamp but not many suggestions about what to do when it doesn't all go as the tutorial said it should have.... Possibly a Wiki could help?
 
mac2maverick said:
I would like to run windows on an external or separate drive so that if or when it gets corrupted with viruses and the like it won't mess up my primary drive. Hmmm, I'll have to search to see if there's a more up to date solution for this query. Can anyone help me??
Click to expand...

How will it mess up your drive??,if a windows virus did get in os x it wouldnt
harm it.Maybe you should try looking that up also
 
The issue comes to the fact that windows is not meant to be installed on an external drive. There is a hacked version tutorial out there that lets you install windows on an external drive, however there are obvious complications with boot camp. Some people experience success, some people find that they still can't select the external drive during installation. That's what happens to me.

As for removing the internal drive on a MBP, yes, u have to do it. It's not terribly complicated, but its required so that the master boot record doesn't get recorded on the wrong drive.

What I have done is installed bootcamp on a 5 gig partition. Then installed windows, then migrated nearly everything over to an external drive. Go into the registry and change your drive letters so the external is drive c and the internal boot camp is drive d. There are several programs that will let you change all you settings and preferences and document locations. Now for the most part, all settings will be directed to the external c drive, all programs will be installed there, windows files will be saved there, etc. You can go back and forth carefully removing stuff from the boot camp, but caution, u can't remove everything, otherwise you might not be able to restore it exactly and be forced to reinstall windows.

Keep your document and settings folder, keep your windows folder, as well as the misc files that are on c:\, outside of any folder structures; all on bootcamp that is. Pagefile.sys and another file (can't remember the name) both the size of your total system ram will have to be kept on the bootcamp. The other file is the temp file saved incase you hibernate while in windows. The pagefile is your standard system memory backup. You can deactivate both these things and not use them, but if you are going to use them, they have to be on the local drive, can't be on the external.

If for some reason you need to make a partition larger than 5gigs to install, you can make a 10 or 15 gig partition, then use rsync in OSX to make an exact replica of bootcamp after you've thinned it out to under 5 gig. Erase the bootcamp partition, redo it, and then use rsync to restore your copied bootcamp.
 
beatledud said:
The issue comes to the fact that windows is not meant to be installed on an external drive. There is a hacked version tutorial out there that lets you install windows on an external drive, however there are obvious complications with boot camp. Some people experience success, some people find that they still can't select the external drive during installation. That's what happens to me.

As for removing the internal drive on a MBP, yes, u have to do it. It's not terribly complicated, but its required so that the master boot record doesn't get recorded on the wrong drive.

What I have done is installed bootcamp on a 5 gig partition. Then installed windows, then migrated nearly everything over to an external drive. Go into the registry and change your drive letters so the external is drive c and the internal boot camp is drive d. There are several programs that will let you change all you settings and preferences and document locations. Now for the most part, all settings will be directed to the external c drive, all programs will be installed there, windows files will be saved there, etc. You can go back and forth carefully removing stuff from the boot camp, but caution, u can't remove everything, otherwise you might not be able to restore it exactly and be forced to reinstall windows.

Keep your document and settings folder, keep your windows folder, as well as the misc files that are on c:\, outside of any folder structures; all on bootcamp that is. Pagefile.sys and another file (can't remember the name) both the size of your total system ram will have to be kept on the bootcamp. The other file is the temp file saved incase you hibernate while in windows. The pagefile is your standard system memory backup. You can deactivate both these things and not use them, but if you are going to use them, they have to be on the local drive, can't be on the external.

If for some reason you need to make a partition larger than 5gigs to install, you can make a 10 or 15 gig partition, then use rsync in OSX to make an exact replica of bootcamp after you've thinned it out to under 5 gig. Erase the bootcamp partition, redo it, and then use rsync to restore your copied bootcamp.
Click to expand...

Sorry forgive me if im wrong but is'nt that just a long winded way of saying
just keep what windows need to run on a 5GB partition and download programs
etc to a external or did i miss something?

Also dont most programs you download give you the option were you want to install
them anyway
 
You can't just say have programs install on the D drive. Settings, misc stuff, systems files, registry, etc, will slowly build up on the C drive and soon take over your partition. This is an option to get essentially everything running off the external, but yeah, u still need the 5 gig partition, but its a sufficient compromise when you spend 5 days straight trying the external only option with out any success.
 
beatledud said:
You can't just say have programs install on the D drive. Settings, misc stuff, systems files, registry, etc, will slowly build up on the C drive and soon take over your partition. This is an option to get essentially everything running off the external, but yeah, u still need the 5 gig partition, but its a sufficient compromise when you spend 5 days straight trying the external only option with out any success.
Click to expand...

What's your reason for wanting it all on an external?
 
peanutismint said:
In his defense, I've done the tutorial with the hard drive removed and it fails at the Windows Install screen for me....
Click to expand...

Unless someone comes up with some robust guidance, I recommend not wasting time with this... and just sharing Windows on the internal drive. With all due respect to the considerable expertise of those posting, I think people are missing something. (Not that I pretend to know what it is.) I read the posts going back a couple of years... and there appears to be some misinformation... or there are at least some subtle hardware differences that account for the problems. (I have a MacBook purchased July 2007, running Tiger with all the updates.) Some of the people that claimed this works simply disappeared. This stuff should be reproducible, and from the number of postings of people having problems, it's clearly not. One shouldn't have to hop on one foot, switch ports if it's Tuesday and raining, then cross your fingers to see if it works.

There have been a few posts on how to make this work, but none of them worked for me. I tried several permutations, I tried several different USB drives, I tried FAT vs. NTFS, I tried changing the number of partitions, I tried the post with the hard drive in, I tried the post with the hard drive out; I even proofread the edited Windows CD several times and went back and created a second one just in case... nothing worked. I could never get it to work. Finally, I figured I was doing more damage to my system by opening things up and repeatedly messing with the hard drive and/or rebooting, that I simply installed Windows internally. It's not as aesthetically pleasing, but I have had no problems.
 
Siberhusky has it mostly right. You can try it once, but if it doesn't work, don't obsess over it like I did. Ultimately, if you are half-way informed with the inner-workings of Windows, try the suggestion I had about migrating as much as you can from bootcamp to your external. It may not be perfect, but 5 gigs off of your 120gig drive isn't the end of the world.
 
wow

lots of reading. I skipped some, hope that won't be a problem. I get the permissions error. How do i partition my external HD so i can install windows, also, can someone post the link or something to instructions on how to modify windows so it doesn't unload and reload windows usb and firewire drivers? Efforts much appreciated.
Edit : i tried newfs_msdos -F32 /dev/rdisk#s1
it just told me drive info.
 
mrichmon said:
If you read the instructions you will see that you need to remove the internal drive to get the Mac to boot from the external drive during the install. There is no way around this requirement.
Click to expand...
That's not true. The alternate install method devised by user gradenko on forum.onmac.net reportedly allows you to get around the requirement of removing your internal HD, and requires at most a 6 MB (not 6 GB) Windows partition on your internal drive in return. Currently (and perhaps permanently), that site is down due to database errors, but here's an archive.org copy of the first page of the thread:


The second page is not present on archive.org -- I tried clicking over from all of their historical copies of page 1 (that were new enough to have a page 2), as well as checking whether they had a copy of the URL minus the stupid embedded session ID (http://forum.onmac.net/showthread.php?t=1015&page=2), and same thing for the "Show Printable Version" link, but no luck. Nothing remaining in Google cache either. Anyone know if there was any useful additional info on page 2?
 
Dan Harkless said:
requires at most a 6 MB (not 6 GB) Windows partition on your internal drive in return.
Click to expand...
Then, by definition, Windows is not just on the external drive and this method does not satisfy the needs and desires of many folks to have Windows just on the external which you CAN do with mrichmon's method.

Nice to have an in-between alternative that may work for the machines where the HDD is hard to access though...

B
 
balamw said:
Then, by definition, Windows is not just on the external drive and this method does not satisfy the needs and desires of many folks to have Windows just on the external which you CAN do with mrichmon's method.
Click to expand...
True, but I thought most people's concern was saving space on their internal HD. In that case, 6 megs is nothing.

I realize some people are also expecting that having Windows entirely on its own drive will be safer, but I think that benefit is minimal. If you're concerned about Windows or some program on it hosing stuff outside of its partition, then it can just as easily hose your (OS-X-only) internal drive. I suppose Mac Pro and MacBook owners who wanted to be extra-paranoid could remove / disconnect their OS X drive every time they booted Windows to negate that possibility, though.
 
Help Please

Hey, i have just discovered this little gem of a thread, and am interested in installing windows onto my western digital 500GB external hard-drive (USB 2.0), which is currently being used as my time machine drive.
Could someone please walk me through the steps of partitioning this drive so i have both windows and time machine available, if this is at all possible 😕
I would prefer to not lose the backups from time machine though

Thanks in advance!
 
I have a pc that had a motherboard die...Im planning on getting the hard drive out, and putting it into an external case. Will I be able to boot off of this since I already have windows installed on this drive and is the master drive on the old pc?
 
Stuck on a silly formatting issue.

Macbook C2D, Leopard. icydock external enclosure, seagate drive from old pc.

Okay, so I know my problem is at the formatting stage. I get the "Your computer's startup program can not gain access to the disk containing..." message no matter what usb port I'm using, and I'm certain my internal drive is sitting on a counter, not in my macbook.

I'm looking for someone who does have this working, (mrichmon?) to tell me just how they formatted/partitioned their drive AND what their drive was doing prior to this. I'm thinking that since I used a drive that was just storage in another PC that it still has some trace of the old partitioning on it, even after having disk utility make the whole thing Fat32.

So, are we formatting the drive in windows or os x?
If os x, GUID table, or MBR?
One partition for the whole drive? Fat? two partitions to mimic the real bootcamp layout?

If in windows, one partition, Ntfs, then marked as active?

I've even tried copying the boot.ini,ntldr,ntdetect.com and can always see and even delete/create partitions in the windows installer, but it never actually accepts the chosen partition and lets me install.

Is there some 3rd party tool or Terminal command I should use to wipe the boot sector of this drive or wipe the whole thing clean and then try to format it again in os x?

Really, any advice would be great. If I was having windows freak out about hardware or something driver related post-install, I'd just forget it, but the fact that it's some silly formatting issue makes it worth the effort.
 
Let me preface this post with the disclaimer that it has been a couple of years since I last performed this install. But I can (mostly) recall the formating details that you ask about.

user1121 said:
Macbook C2D, Leopard. icydock external enclosure, seagate drive from old pc.
Click to expand...

I used an Other World Computing Mercury Elite enclosure. I do not recall if this has an IDE or SATA drive inside.

user1121 said:
Okay, so I know my problem is at the formatting stage. I get the "Your computer's startup program can not gain access to the disk containing..." message no matter what usb port I'm using, and I'm certain my internal drive is sitting on a counter, not in my macbook.

I'm looking for someone who does have this working, (mrichmon?) to tell me just how they formatted/partitioned their drive AND what their drive was doing prior to this. I'm thinking that since I used a drive that was just storage in another PC that it still has some trace of the old partitioning on it, even after having disk utility make the whole thing Fat32.

So, are we formatting the drive in windows or os x?
If os x, GUID table, or MBR?
One partition for the whole drive? Fat? two partitions to mimic the real bootcamp layout?

If in windows, one partition, Ntfs, then marked as active?
Click to expand...

I messed around with many different ways to format the drive because I was trying to get the OS X firmware to recognize the drive on boot so that I could avoid using the startup preference pane to boot into Windows. The first time I performed this install I used the Windows installer to partition the drive into an NTFS partition and a larger FAT32 partition. (Both would have been primary partitions.) NTFS was about 20-40GB and this is where I installed Windows. The FAT32 partition was to allow data sharing with OS X.

I messed around with using OS X to partition the drive using an MBR and using a GUID. None of the OS X partitioned drives ended up being happy during the install.

I also used a Linux partition tool from a Linux rescue disk to partition the drive and this resulted in a successful install. With Linux, fdisk worked to partition with MBR and then install Windows. On Linux I also used a visual (text based GUI-like) tool which allowed me to create both an MBR and GUID partition table on the disk Windows installed onto this partition setup but since the GUID table did not help with getting the Mac firmware to boot the drive consistently I switched back to using Windows to partition the drive for the last couple of times I performed this install.

I have always (including for this type of install) had success with using dd to wipe the partition table. Such as:
dd bs=1k if=/dev/zero of=</dev/disk_device> count=3

Strictly you should only need to overwrite the first 512 bytes of the drive (the above command writes "0" to the first 3Kb but that is just to "be sure").

user1121 said:
Really, any advice would be great.
Click to expand...

Hopefully these pointers help. If not, post again and I will dig out the drive and post the actual partition table information.
 
Well, still no luck. used dd to wipe the partition table, formatted with windows, same problem. Can't use the installer to format as it whines when choose the drive to install to. Tested my install cd's mod by doing this with my pc, installed just fine, so it's something with getting the drive to work on the macbook. Pretty much out of ideas. If copying your working partition table doesn't do it I'll have to settle with something about my enclosure just not cutting it. Oh well.
 
user1121 said:
If copying your working partition table doesn't do it I'll have to settle with something about my enclosure just not cutting it. Oh well.
Click to expand...

Output of OS X command "fdisk -d /dev/disk1" where "/dev/disk1" is my external usb drive with windows installed:
Code: 
14,153600090,0x07,*,0,1,1,1023,13,14
153600104,237121780,0x0B,-,1023,13,14,1023,13,14
0,0,0x00,-,0,0,0,0,0,0
0,0,0x00,-,0,0,0,0,0,0

The OS X fdisk command can use these strings to replicate a partition table on another drive.

According to the Windows XP Disk Management tool the partitions are:
primary partition 1 - NTFS (active) - 73.24GB
primary partition 2 - FAT32 - 113.04GB

Another thing that may work is to use a PC to start the Windows install on the external drive. Then when the Windows installed reboots switch the external drive and the Windows CD over to the MacBook. This may avoid the problem with the Windows installed not recognizing the external drive at the beginning of the install.
 
theory 566

hey if you got a big enough Extrenal HDD you can reinstall Mac OS X Leopard on that disk and just run boot camp from there. get my drift.
 
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