Question about WintoUSB (in the process of installing Bootcamp in an external drive)

[levmc]

I'm following the steps here https://9to5mac.com/2020/07/14/install-windows-mac-external-ssd-drive-boot-camp-2020-video/ to create a bootcamp from external drive.

In my 5TB WD drive, I set aside 110GB for Bootcamp and formatted it as MS-DOS.

But in "Please select the destination disk" part, the only option it's giving me is what seems like the entire external drive. The only option it gives me to choose as the destination is this:

Disk 1: WD easystore 2647

...which seems to be the name of my whole drive?

Does WintoUSB allow using only a portion of the drive as bootcamp or does it require the whole drive to be dedicated to bootcamp?

Or, since I have only the Bootcamp portion of my drive formatted to MS-DOS, will WintoUSB only affect that part of my drive and leave other partitions alone?

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

My silly question is:
Why do you need boot camp when running windows from SSD/HDD in an USB box?

On my iMac:
Internal drive is an OSX Yosemite SSD.
External drive is Windows 10 on USB (Installed by Rufus with 1803 ISO file, using another PC)
When I plug in the USB while OSX is running, I can choose from System Reference to boot from Windows 10 disk.
Select Windows 10 disk and reboot, the iMac boot right away to Windows 10, no hiccup at all.
Only 4 devices didn't have appropriate driver to work:
- Bluetooth
- Coprocessor (don't know what it is)
- Unknow device
- Unknow device
1 device showed issues with driver, but worked anyway
- Built-in Isight Camera
(I opened the Camera app in windows to confirm that the camera worked)

The only issue was the internal speaker had no sounds, even though nothing abnormal about it. (sound level meter still running)

When booting back to OSX, maybe I just need to press Alt on the keyboard and select OSX disk to boot back.
If that didn't work, I would just unplug the USB drive and turn iMac back on again.
No bootcamp needed yet.

 

[levmc]

Come to think about it, I guess I don't need bootcamp on an external. What GB is your USB? I heard that USB is not ideal for booting Windows in the long run.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Come to think about it, I guess I don't need bootcamp on an external. What GB is your USB? I heard that USB is not ideal for booting Windows in the long run.

I use a 180GB M2 SATA SSD, in a M2 to USB 3.0 box.
It's painfully slow when booting to windows via the USB 2.0 port on my Early 2009 iMac, but after getting in, the experience somehow improves.
If you can install drivers for the devices which Windows 10 can't find compatible drivers, then you don't need to install BootCamp, but you still need the BootCamp 6.x file because all of the compatible drivers are in there.

If you don't use Windows frequently, restart the machine while holding Option key, or if fails, do a NVRAM/PRAM reset may work better. And you still can use the Windows To Go on any other PC/Mac as well.

If you don't, and you have removed the WindowsToGo USB after shutting down from Windows, other users may panic when they turn on the Mac because of the grey, then black screen with a dash, and the notice: "No booting devices found, insert a booting device and hit any key."