Doesn't work. Windows resets the USB drivers during boot so it doesn't matter if you have OSX installed with it or not. It will NOT boot off the external drive without some modding.
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BootCamp + External Drive
- Thread starter derajfast
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Doesn't work. Windows resets the USB drivers during boot so it doesn't matter if you have OSX installed with it or not. It will NOT boot off the external drive without some modding.
I've been trying to do this and this many-year-long-thread seems to include everything i've ever come across in my research and experimentation. I couldn't read all of it.
I've been experimenting and currently i've installed Leopard on my external and am going to boot from that with the internal drive of a macbook i'm using taken out (when i tried this with it in, Bootcamp wouldn't let me do anything) and see if i can convince bootcamp to aid an install to the external.
*sigh*, but it won't boot to my MBP properly because of the port issues...will it?
Ideally i would like to use FW800, but my external is triple-interface, so USB will work if FW can't.
I'm sure someone has asked before, but if anyone has succeeded, could they please post the exact steps they took? Thanks!
I've been experimenting and currently i've installed Leopard on my external and am going to boot from that with the internal drive of a macbook i'm using taken out (when i tried this with it in, Bootcamp wouldn't let me do anything) and see if i can convince bootcamp to aid an install to the external.
*sigh*, but it won't boot to my MBP properly because of the port issues...will it?
Ideally i would like to use FW800, but my external is triple-interface, so USB will work if FW can't.
I'm sure someone has asked before, but if anyone has succeeded, could they please post the exact steps they took? Thanks!
Read the thread. There are many issues covered that touch on your questions.
Bootcamp will not touch an external drive because Windows will not boot off an external drive successfully without significant modifications to Windows. Windows will not install on an external drive without modifications to the Windows install CD.
An external drive with Windows installed will boot on a MBP. However getting Windows installed on the external drive using your MBP (assuming this is a MBP from before the recent update to the current models) will be very difficult since you must remove the internal hard drive for Windows to install on the external drive.
Firewire will not work because Windows will not boot off a firewire drive. It is possible to modify the Windows installer to load the USB drivers earlier in the boot process and thereby end up with a Windows installation that will boot off a USB drive. The firewire drivers for Windows cannot be successfully loaded early enough on the Windows boot process for a similar change to work for firewire drives.
Succeeded with what?
If you mean succeeded with installing Windows on an external drive and booting from that drive, then multiple people have succeeded by following the instructions I posted earlier in the thread.
The website that everything points to for instructions to modify the XP installation, http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176 , has been down for a couple of days now (i know it was up about a week ago). Does anyone have those instructions or know of another place they've been posted? I'm running out of time to do this installation (long story).
I have the instructions as a saved html file. Send me a private message with your email address and I'll send the instructions to you.
I've been reading through this over the course of a few weeks. I am on a MacBook 10.5.5 and so far I've only succeeded in partitioning my internal hard-drive and installing windows on it and being able to boot it by holding the left option key on boot-up. I have all my PC stuff needed on an external harddrive which both platforms pick up.
My only trouble is that Windows doesn't pick up my mac's hardware, and I also can't seem to get a connection going. I don't know what people mean when they refer to using Boot Camp to make that possible. Any help would be great.
My only trouble is that Windows doesn't pick up my mac's hardware, and I also can't seem to get a connection going. I don't know what people mean when they refer to using Boot Camp to make that possible. Any help would be great.
^ this has nothing to do with this thread (but i can understand why you think it does).
all you have to do is insert your first install disc while in Windows and the Boot Camp drivers installer will pop up.
all you have to do is insert your first install disc while in Windows and the Boot Camp drivers installer will pop up.
No such luck, I get a blue screen of death when I try that. I have SP2, at least I thought I did, but uh, one thing is that the windows OS within the mac doesn't have the ability to restart, making installing SP2 kind of impossible... for me at least.
This thread has nothing to do with getting Windows installed on your internal drive.
It sounds like you have manually partitioned your internal drive and installed Windows beside OS X. If so, then unfortunately you've gone about installing Windows the hard way.
"Boot Camp Assistant" is a piece of software written by Apple that is installed as part of OS X 10.5.5. The progam is installed in /Applications/Utilities. Boot Camp automates the process of installing and uninstalling Windows from an internal drive on Intel Macs.
Boot Camp walks the user through:
- writing a bunch of Windows drivers for the Mac hardware to a blank CD,
- resizing the OS X partition to create a partition for Windows (without loosing the data on the OS X partition,
- creating a Windows compatible (MBR) boot block that mirrors the GUID partition scheme used by OS X on intel,
- storing some preferences settings to support automatic removal of the Windows partition and expansion of the OS X partition back to the full disk if the user decides to uninstall Windows.
From where it sounds like you are on the install you probably have two options:
- run Boot Camp and see if you can generate the drivers CD. (Or extract the driver CD image from the Boot Camp binary.) Then get the drivers installed in Windows. If Windows will not boot for you (even in safe mode) then this may not be an option.
- Remove your Windows partition and use Boot Camp to install. Either you can run Boot Camp and it might detect your Windows partition and allow you to uninstall. (This may not work or may leave the GUID/MBR partition tables in an odd state.) Or, wipe your hard drive install OS X on the drive then use Boot Camp to install Windows.
Take a look at the Apple support pages for Boot Camp. Apple provides comprehensive information on the Boot Camp install process.
Cornfused in Korntucky...
Ok, so I tried this.
- I deleted my boot camp partition (which I've been using for several years)
- I restarted and ran the windows installer
- It could see my external drive (firewire), but said it couldn't install there
- I went "back to the mac", ran disk utility and formatted the external drive in NTFS
- Rinse, repeat, only I tried the USB connection. This time it said I had to have a windows partition on the main mac drive before it could install. This contradicts what was posted here. Do I have to do a 5g partition, and then I can remove it once installed, or will I always have to have a PC partition on my main mac drive? (undesirable).
What am I missing here?
Ok, I tried it with the 5g partition, and it installs, but on the reboot it goes into an endless loop of reinstalling.
Looks like its a bust on 10.5.6 at least on my Core Duo iMac
Ok, so I tried this.
- I deleted my boot camp partition (which I've been using for several years)
- I restarted and ran the windows installer
- It could see my external drive (firewire), but said it couldn't install there
- I went "back to the mac", ran disk utility and formatted the external drive in NTFS
- Rinse, repeat, only I tried the USB connection. This time it said I had to have a windows partition on the main mac drive before it could install. This contradicts what was posted here. Do I have to do a 5g partition, and then I can remove it once installed, or will I always have to have a PC partition on my main mac drive? (undesirable).
What am I missing here?
Ok, I tried it with the 5g partition, and it installs, but on the reboot it goes into an endless loop of reinstalling.
Looks like its a bust on 10.5.6 at least on my Core Duo iMac
I tried. Can't!
Guys!
I'm wondering what happens when you select the external disk to install XP in the devise selection screen while XP installation? When I select my USB or F/W disk, the XP installer shows can't be installed on a external devices. And installation won't go next.
I think that's not about the firmware because the installer has identified the external disk. But XP don't allow us to install it on external drive.
My firmware is upgraded as the newest yesterday. Dec. 29 2008
How did you guys above get it work???
Did you follow the instructions to the letter and modify your XP install disc according to the instructions at http://www.ngine.de/article/id/8 ?
B
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
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.
I'm using a intel core 2 duo macbook pro and i has just bought a esata external hard drive( Fantom $119) and an express card-esata adapter from iogear.
My plan was to divide this new HD into 2 partitions, and select one to use as windows. I partitioned ,and then I made the computer boot trough cd in order to reach the winXP instalation cd.
The problem is, when i have to decide which partition to use the guide shows me 2 totally different partions that i don't have . I'm worried that this adaptor from silicon image (http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?pid=32) has no driver to boot. I'm now stucked , thinking about what to do.
Any help?
thx a lot
B
My plan was to divide this new HD into 2 partitions, and select one to use as windows. I partitioned ,and then I made the computer boot trough cd in order to reach the winXP instalation cd.
The problem is, when i have to decide which partition to use the guide shows me 2 totally different partions that i don't have . I'm worried that this adaptor from silicon image (http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?pid=32) has no driver to boot. I'm now stucked , thinking about what to do.
Any help?
thx a lot
B
I had XP running from my 500gb USB enclosure for a couple of months. I then migrated everything over to my internal drive since I like being able to play games on my laptop on the go.
The instructions I used are on this page. Just skim over the types of flash drives until you get to the parts about extracting the CD.
http://www.ngine.de/article/id/8
Good luck! It was definitely a fun afternoon project.
The instructions I used are on this page. Just skim over the types of flash drives until you get to the parts about extracting the CD.
http://www.ngine.de/article/id/8
Good luck! It was definitely a fun afternoon project.
How about express-card solid state drives or express-card with SD/SDHC card slots?
what is the performance like? is it slow could you play games off the external drive?
Well apparently the new SD equipped Macs will actually boot off of SD http://gizmodo.com/5285969/new-macbook-pros-can-boot-from-their-internal-sd-slot So now I just have to get a big enough card and try it! XP probably won't be able to boot off of it without removing the internal HDD.
B
okay so i have all up to date firmware but i may doing something wrong, if you could give me step by step to get the firmware with BIOS that would be awesome! also i would prefer to run a version of Vista NOT a version of XP, do you know if this will work fine??
also this driver CD that is created through bootcamp, i started the program and nothing cam up tp creatte this disk so is it after you install windows that you do this? sorry for all the possibly easy questions
I think that is the key phrase.
Aside from that manipulation of an install disc that is mentioned so often, I have yet to read a way to do this.
You would think that some smart computer whiz would have come up with an easier method or at least a program to assist you with creating the needed install disc. Most of us own a legitimate XP disc but are not comfortable or computer savvy, with doing the German method http://www.ngine.de/article/id/8
Seeing this 4 year old thread resurface is very nostalgic.
There must be another solution for putting a USB or FW bootable XP on an external hard drive .
I have all the pieces of the puzzle; I'm just hoping someone can chime in on the smoothest route. Doesn't have to be one-click easy, but easiest thus far?
-MBP 13 (including the SD slot -- too slow?)
-external drives USB and FireWire 800
-Windows Ultimate retail box
-any number of 2-4GB SD cards, thumbdrives, etc. (can purchase new ones: speeds?)
Please. Anyone. This? or maybe This? Will you still need to boot with reFit?
What's the workflow look like? plug in external drive, hold down [what keys]? To reboot into the Mac, same process?
Which way is the 'right' (or at least, smoothest) way?
Thanks!
-MBP 13 (including the SD slot -- too slow?)
-external drives USB and FireWire 800
-Windows Ultimate retail box
-any number of 2-4GB SD cards, thumbdrives, etc. (can purchase new ones: speeds?)
Please. Anyone. This? or maybe This? Will you still need to boot with reFit?
What's the workflow look like? plug in external drive, hold down [what keys]? To reboot into the Mac, same process?
Which way is the 'right' (or at least, smoothest) way?
Thanks!