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External Boot Camp

--ld-- said:
This method worked for me:
http://bleeptobleep.blogspot.co.at/2013/02/mac-install-windows-7-or-8-on-external.html
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's the same guide I used, but I got my knickers in a twist messing about with imagex and found it far simpler to just use WinToUSB. Works perfectly with W10 on a USB3 HDD plugged into a USB2 port on a mid-2011 iMac except the sound, as Apple don't support W10 on this model. W8.1 on the other hand constantly fails upon login opining that the newly created and unique user account is unrecognisable.

I wonder if anyone has successfully installed W8.1 with this method, using imagex? Perhaps there is some minute formatting detail involved or something, but can't really see it as the boot and installation process works fine, it is when you finally reboot upon completion of installation that it fails, so that seems to indicate some vexing anomaly with W8.1 itself? I have tried a couple of different W8 images but they all terminate in the same way.
 
Robbo1 said:
Isn't an easier option to do a small (~30gb) bootcamp partition (just enough for Win 10 and the Steam app) and to put all the games on an external SSD?
Click to expand...

I had an external 1TB USB3 Windows 10 install working (using the VirtualBox installation method) and fully activated, until I also configured it as a VMware Fusion virtual machine. That bricked it bad enough that I had to reformat the drive. Not wanting to go through that again, I made a 50GB bootcamp partition and used the ExFAT formatted 1TB drive as a D: drive. That's been running fine now and can boot native for games, or as a virtual machine. I do have to mount the D: drive as a USB2 drive rather than USB3 when it is a virtual machine, but hopefully once VMware updates their USB3 drivers I will be able to go USB3 even as a VM.

I have 25GB free on the 50GB C: partition, so a 30GB partition would be cutting it pretty close.
 
jzuena said:
I had an external 1TB USB3 Windows 10 install working (using the VirtualBox installation method) and fully activated, until I also configured it as a VMware Fusion virtual machine. That bricked it bad enough that I had to reformat the drive. Not wanting to go through that again, I made a 50GB bootcamp partition and used the ExFAT formatted 1TB drive as a D: drive. That's been running fine now and can boot native for games, or as a virtual machine. I do have to mount the D: drive as a USB2 drive rather than USB3 when it is a virtual machine, but hopefully once VMware updates their USB3 drivers I will be able to go USB3 even as a VM.

I have 25GB free on the 50GB C: partition, so a 30GB partition would be cutting it pretty close.
Click to expand...

So you first of all create the boot camp drive on the external then from within Fusion you call it up as a VD?
 
vkd said:
So you first of all create the boot camp drive on the external then from within Fusion you call it up as a VD?
Click to expand...

I documented my steps in this post. Basically, yes you format the drive ahead of time in a way that adds an EFI partition and a partition you will use for Windows, then use a hypervisor to write to the Windows partition as a raw disk and once the files are copied to the drive and it wants to reboot to do the installation, you instead boot to that partition natively and finish the Windows install. If you go with this external drive option, DON'T try to use that same raw disk partition as a virtual machine or you risk drive corruption like I did. You will have to hold the option key down whenever you want to boot into Windows, since you won't have Bootcamp support files. In the end I just went ahead and used Bootcamp to make a 50GB partition and made the external drive a big D: drive for Windows.
 
Now may be a good moment to post the procedure I myself followed to create an External Boot Camp HDD. Although I have put to install W10 in the instructions it works for W8.1 too, but I cannot get it to complete correctly, it fails upon first login due to some user account anomaly. Perhaps someone with a more recent iMac with USB3 will have better results; that would be interesting. Another thing is, with W10 on a mid-2011 iMac your sound drivers won't install, I got around this by using a USB Audio card, which are cheap and that gave me plug 'n' play sound.



Mid-2011 iMac: Install Windows 10 on an external USB2 drive without using bootcamp

Introduction

If you want to use Windows 10 on a mid-2011 iMac without disturbing your internal storage, this is one way to go.

What this guide will make you do:

  • It will make you erase all your data from your external USB2 hard drive
  • It will make you install Windows on your external USB2 hard drive
  • It will make you install bootcamp drivers
What this will not make you do:

  • It will not make you modify anything on your internal Mac hard drive
  • It will not make you use or install the bootcamp assistant
  • It will not activate the Preference Pane for the default boot drive. You have to boot by pressing the ALT key to manually select your boot drive each time you want to boot Windows.
What you'll need

  • An external hard drive with a USB2 connector. This drive will be formatted so ensure you saved your files before going further. You can use either an SSD drive or a classic hard drive.
  • A Windows 10 installation ISO (check whether to install 32 or 64 bits versions based on your Bootcamp drivers) and the corresponding Windows serial number.
  • One of the following:
    • Mac OS X with a Windows 7, 8 or 10 Virtual Machine (use VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop for example.
    • A PC running Windows 7, 8 or 10 → Read the important note below
  • WinToUSB - available free here: http://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/
  • rEFIt, an EFI bootloader that will make your iMac boot off the external drive. Download here: http://refit.sourceforge.net/
  • Bootcamp drivers for your Mac. You can get these either by running bootcamp from your Mac (Applications > Utilities > Bootcamp) or use the direct download links here.
IMPORTANT: If your Mac has a 64 bits processor, your Windows Virtual Machine on OSX, your Windows installation on your PC and your Windows DVD/ISO must also be in 64 bits!



Step by Step guide

Step 1: Clean, partition and format your external hard drive

  1. On your Windows installation or virtual machine, plug in your external hard drive
  2. Open the command prompt in administrator mode (cmd.exe). To run it in administrator mode, right click on cmd.exe > Run as admin.
  3. Type the following and hit enter to open the disk partitioner utility:
  4. diskpart
  5. Type the following and hit enter to list your drives:
  6. list disk
  7. This will display a list of disks mounted on your computer or virtual machine. Make sure your drive is listed here before you continue.
  8. Identify the disk ID of your external hard drive. Replace # by your real external disk ID in the command below:
  9. select disk #
  10. Clean all partitions by typing the following (warning: this will erase all data from your external drive!):
  11. clean
  12. Type the following to use MBR as partitioning format:
  13. convert mbr
  14. Create the boot partition by typing the following followed by the enter key:
  15. create partition primary size=350
  16. This will create a 350MB partition on your external drive
  17. Format the partition in FAT32 by typing the following:
  18. format fs=fat32 quick
  19. Set this partition to active by typing:
  20. active
  21. Assign a letter to mount this partition. We will use letter B in our example. If B is already used on your PC, replace B by any other available letter:
  22. assign letter=b
  23. Windows will detect a new drive and probably display a pop-up. Ignore that.
  24. Create the Windows installation partition using all the remaining space available on the external drive by typing the following:
  25. create partition primary
  26. Format the new partition in NTFS:
  27. format fs=ntfs quick
  28. Assign a letter to mount this partition. We will use letter O in our example. If O is already used on your PC, replace O by any other available letter:
  29. assign letter=o
  30. Windows will detect a new drive and probably display a pop-up. Ignore that.
  31. Exit the disk partitioner utility by typing:
  32. exit
Step 3: Prepare your external drive.

  1. Use WinToUSB to copy Windows installation onto your external drive. A fairly straightforward process, simply select your Windows 10 installation ISO and your external drive where prompted and let the software do its work. Takes about 10 minutes.
  2. When WinToUSB is finished, copy your Bootcamp drivers onto it to use in a moment when we finalise the installation.
  3. You can quit the VM now if using one, or plug your USB drive to your iMac if doing it that way.
  4. On your iMac, open the rEFIt package and install it on your iMac internal drive. Don’t worry, you will immediately move it to the external drive.
  5. Go to the root of your internal drive where you will find a folder called “EFI”. Copy the contents of it to the EFI folder on the boot partition of your external drive which you created earlier (350MB assigned letter=b, remember?) On my iMac, once I’d closed the VM, this drive appeared on my desktop as “NO NAME”. Just open it and copy those files to the EFI folder created by the WinToUSB process.
  6. Delete the EFI folder from your internal drive, thus removing all traces of rEFIt from your iMac itself, it only now existing on your external drive.
  7. Step 4: Boot from your external drive and install Windows
  1. Plug in your external drive:
    • If you've done all the previous steps from a Windows PC, unplug your external drive from your PC and plug it to your Mac.
    • If you've done all the previous steps from your Mac using a Virtual Machine, ensure the external drive is plugged in.
  2. Reboot your Mac and once the bootup sound is over, immediately press the ALT (option) key and release it only when the boot drives selection screen appears. If you did not get the boot drives selection screen, reboot and try again. The timing to press the ALT (option) key is quite short. It must not be too early or too late.
  3. On the boot selection screen, choose the orange external drive labelled “GUI boot” using the arrow keys on your keyboard, then press enter.
  4. The Windows installation starts. Follow the on-screen instructions as normal. The installation program will restart your computer one or 2 times. Don't forget to press ALT (option) right after the bootup sound, and boot on Windows again each time to continue the installation.
Step 5: Install bootcamp drivers

  1. Once the Windows installation is complete, Open File Explorer on your external drive (now drive c:\) where you stored the bootcamp drivers (see "what you'll need" section), open it and right click on "setup.exe" and select "Run as admin". Follow the on-screen instructions.
    • If you have an error saying that you can't run this program on this PC, obviously you have installed a 32 bits version of Windows and the bootcamp drivers for your Mac are made for a 64 bits version. You have to restart the whole guide and make sure to use a 64bit version of Windows this time!
  2. Once the bootcamp drivers are all installed, reboot and press ALT (option) after the bootup sound to boot on Windows again. And Voilà, you have Windows installed on your USB2 drive running on your Mac.
  3. Now each time you want to boot on Windows, press and hold the ALT (option) key after the startup sound and select "Windows", then press Enter. You can now play your favourite PC games. I can confirm that Rise Of The Tomb Raider works on the Mid-2011 iMac with Radeon HD 6770M graphics card with 512MB or RAM, even though the game itself says it needs mimimum of HD 7770 with 2GB. Of course this is with low quality graphics and it runs a little slowly, but when all is said and done, I think that is quite an achievement.


Credits, sources and big thank you to:

  • Stephen Roth where I got the bulk of this tutorial
  • Chris F Caroll where Stephen Roth finally found where to download the bootcamp drivers without running bootcamp
  • WinToUSB and rEFIt were found whilst trawling the internet, thanks to all concerned!
 
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Just thought I'd let you know I installed Windows 10 on a Samsung 1TB USB External HDD, connected to USB2 port on mid-2011 iMac, I installed the Apple Bootcamp Windows drivers but the internal sound card doesn't work so I am using a USB audio card, which works great with headphones. Into that W10 I have installed Rise Of The Tomb Raider game, reduced the graphics to the 'Low' preset (not "lowest") and its working really well. The visuals are decent enough, hardly any lag, definitely playable, doable, cost-effective way round things.

Incidentally I checked the recent macOS release of the RoTR game by Feral Interactive and found that it is 2x as large as the Windows version. The Win clocks in at around 16GB total size (before install) and the macOS version of exactly the same thing is 32GB! Can't run it though on a mid-2011 as the 6770M graphics card doesn't support Metal.
 
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vkd said:
Just thought I'd let you know I installed Windows 10 on a Samsung 1TB USB External HDD, connected to USB2 port on mid-2011 iMac, I installed the Apple Bootcamp Windows drivers but the internal sound card doesn't work so I am using a USB audio card, which works great with headphones. Into that W10 I have installed Rise Of The Tomb Raider game, reduced the graphics to the 'Low' preset (not "lowest") and its working really well. The visuals are decent enough, hardly any lag, definitely playable, doable, cost-effective way round things.

Incidentally I checked the recent macOS release of the RoTR game by Feral Interactive and found that it is 2x as large as the Windows version. The Win clocks in at around 16GB total size (before install) and the macOS version of exactly the same thing is 32GB! Can't run it though on a mid-2011 as the 6770M graphics card doesn't support Metal.
Click to expand...
Where is this usb audio card?
 
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