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Macbook air boot from a USB flash drive
- Thread starter dextro
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Just yesterday I booted my new MBA revc from a flash drive to do a fresh os x install. It worked great.
To create it I put the osx boot DVD my uMB and used disk utility to restore the DVD image to the 8gb flash drive.
Then boot the air with the option key held down and select the flash drive.
It was very fast and easy!
To create it I put the osx boot DVD my uMB and used disk utility to restore the DVD image to the 8gb flash drive.
Then boot the air with the option key held down and select the flash drive.
It was very fast and easy!
I'm afraid not. In theory restoring a windows boot cd to a flash drive should do the same thing but I have not tried it so could not say for sure.
Thus far I've stuck with VM's to do Windows and Linux as I really don't need the extra performance bootcamp offers.
Abyssgh0st
macrumors 68000
I was also wondering about this, because I want to have Windows on a small external drive, and wanted to know how easy this is if it is possible.
Windows generally cannot be installed onto a USB drive due to the way it handles USB devices on startup.
However, Windows XP can be installed on a USB drive with some hacking. See here. It's a little involved. I assume the drive would appear as a standard Bootcamp drive (and boot properly) after this process, but I've never tried.
I'm not sure about Vista and 7. I think they have the same USB issues as XP, and there might be a similar "hacky" solution.
However, Windows XP can be installed on a USB drive with some hacking. See here. It's a little involved. I assume the drive would appear as a standard Bootcamp drive (and boot properly) after this process, but I've never tried.
I'm not sure about Vista and 7. I think they have the same USB issues as XP, and there might be a similar "hacky" solution.