Late 2013 iMac boot camp surprise

[mogens]

Hi
Just got my iMac 27" i7, 3TB FD, GTX 780 iMac and it runs like a dream compared to my old 2009 iMac.
I wanted to try out boot camp, but did'nt want to mess with the internal drive. I have read the various DIY tutorials about installing on an external thunderball/USB3 drive. They all seemed a little too technical for my taste, and since I don't really need windows, I decided to take a shortcut and just install windows 8.1 (x64) on a samsung 830, 256 GB SSD plugged into my old compaq CQ61 laptop.
I took out the disk a plugged it in my Inateck FDU3v-1E USB3 dock and fired up the iMac with the alt key. To my surprise the "windows" disk showed up and in a matter of second I booted in windows 8.1. I installed the Bootcamp5 drivers, restarted windows and everything seems to work just fine
Being a "bootcamp beginner" I would like to know if there are anything I need to remove/uninstall (drivers etc.) on the windows drive, since it was original installed on a Compaq PC? (and is there any risk that this bootcamp setup could harm my iMacs hardware in any way).
Anyway, this is a really fast and uncomplicated way to setup an external working windows boot camp disk.
thx

 

[Truthfulie]

Go through the drivers in Device Manager and see if you can spot drivers that was specific to your Compaq machine and get rid of those. If you are unsure, I think it's best if you just left as is. I don't think you really need to since Compaq-specific hardware should simply register as not being plugged-in.

 

[mogens]

Thanks..this setup works very well. Is there any way I can access files on my internal (share folder) on my internal mac fusion drive?

 

[Truthfulie]

Thanks..this setup works very well. Is there any way I can access files on my internal (share folder) on my internal mac fusion drive?

It's been a while since I've used Bootcamp, but if I remember correctly, there isn't built-in solution to let you access HFS+ drive. Windows cannot access file system HFS+ natively.

I know Paragon has software that let you access HFS+ file system on Windows, but I haven't tried it myself but considering that many have reported third-party application to extend file system access ability of OS X, i.e. NTFS file system for OS X has resorted in some form of instability, I would imagine same could be said about the other way around.

I am not sure what you intend to use Windows for and that Bootcamp is absolutely needed instead of virtual machine solution, but if file sharing between two OSs, then some sort of virtual machine may be a better solution for you.

 

[GovtLawyer]

Just curious

This is not a flame post. I am genuinely interested in why you went through all of the trouble to install Bootcamp and Windows if, as you say, you don't really need windows? I escaped from windows 5 years ago, after around 20 years or so of Windows aggravation. The thought of anything even resembling Windows near my Mac scares me. So, I wonder why anyone would add Windows to a Mac if they didn't need to.

Steven

 

[mogens]

Too much spare time I guess? BTW I'm very impressed with windows 8.1 and I really like it...great speed and good game performance. I installed Nvidia experience and it did a good job optimizing and installing drivers for my GTX 780 card. Startup time is about the same for my internal fusiondrive os x 10.9.2 and the external ssd windows 8.1 ... about 15 seconds