Running Windows 7 from a USB 3.0 Drive

[erutpar]

I've read about the success of installing and running Windows 7 on a SSD Thunderbolt drive. Take this guide for example:

1. Use Boot Camp Assistant to install Windows 7 on your internal hard drive
2. Boot into Windows and install the Apple support drives for Windows 7
3. Power off Windows and connect your external ThunderBolt hard drive
4. Boot into Windows and allow Windows to install the ThunderBolt drivers (Note: The reason we reboot here is because Windows cannot recognize a ThunderBolt device unless it's connected at power on)
5. Reboot into Mac OS X
6. Create a Winclone image of the Boot Camp partition
7. Open Disk Utility and create a new FAT partition on your external ThunderBolt hard drive
8. While in Disk Utility, remove the Boot Camp partition from your internal hard drive and expand the Mac OS X partition back to full size
8. Open Winclone and restore the Boot Camp image to the new partition on your external ThunderBolt Drive
9. Restart the computer and boot into Windows by holding down alt/option
10. Let Windows check the disk for consistancy (Note: When the disk check finishes it will reboot automatically so be ready to press alt/option so you can select Windows. If you miss it and it boots back into Mac OS X no biggie, just restart and hold alt/option again)
11. You're done... Now just don't try to move the ThunderBolt drive around while using Windows. If it disconnects it'll lock up and you'll have to forcefully reboot by holding down the power button.

I'm wondering if this might work on a USB Thumb drive. In particular the SanDisk extreme Thumb drive which supposedly has data transfer rates of 190 MB/Sec. That seems plenty enough speed for less-demanding Windows programs.

Is this possible? Can it work using the same method as quoted above?

 

[fedecape]

give it a try and let us know!

I'm really interested

 

[copa]

This sounds great, please let us know if it works out!

Although instead of thunderbolt divers you should probably see to get USB3 drivers since win7 doesn't provide them out of the box and I'm not sure if win7 updates them automatically.
I think those drivers can be found/downloaded here:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/confirm.aspx?httpDown=http://downloadmirror.intel.com/22824/eng/SetupUSB3.zip&lang=eng&Dwnldid=22824

But I'm not a 100% sure those are the correct drivers, if you know any better than me, please correct me!

 

[krravi]

This sounds great, please let us know if it works out!

Although instead of thunderbolt divers you should probably see to get USB3 drivers since win7 doesn't provide them out of the box and I'm not sure if win7 updates them automatically.
I think those drivers can be found/downloaded here:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/co...2824/eng/SetupUSB3.zip&lang=eng&Dwnldid=22824

But I'm not a 100% sure those are the correct drivers, if you know any better than me, please correct me!

I think it won't. You can't equate thunderbolt with USB interface. With thunderbolt Windows still thinks your drive is a internal PCI with USB it knows its an external drive or something to that effect.

I am not sure about this entirely though.

 

[copa]

while Win7 might be a dead end or not, windows 8 is capable of running as "Windows 8 to go"

Google that, it seems very promising to me

 

[awair]

I have both a USB3 & Thunderbolt dock for the Seagate GoFlex drives.

The (Seagate) drives themselves are very mediocre with atrocious transfer speeds (sorry can't remember the actual numbers).

I bought some spare drive caddies (eBay, thank you) and now use a couple of SSD for various Virtual Machines. The performance is exceptional with Thunderbolt & nearly as good with USB3.

If you get a USB3 SSD, then you will have no problem. If you are considering a USB(3) Flash drive, make sure you check the transfer rates. Also the Mini Drive & 'Nifty Mini' have very slow transfer speeds in comparison.

I'm getting 250MBps+, the micro SD cards are quoting one tenth of that. The internal SSD (2013 Air) is about twice that.

 

[erutpar]

Good things to keep into consideration. Thanks for the thoughts

 

[vtrikoupis]

retina

i'm really interested in this as well
The only mini SD card at the moment which still can't compete with the OS needs is the sandisk ultra (80read 50write or so)

I'm hoping that this drive is a solution.
I'm keeping the OS X side for work and productivity
and having a small windows section for gaming.
64GB should be enough for windows and a game or 2 please let us know how it goes down!

 

[jsnb76]

Win 81 VHD Boot Experiences

Simple to use WIM2VHD (Make the VHD Files at least 22+Gigabytes)

Prepare USB3 Fast Drive (250r150w)drive use EasyBCD
Create MBR
Create BCD

Drop Your Customized VHD (Windows New Install File) Boot Partition

Load USB's BCD

Create Entry for VHD File

(recently I like to add an entry for a boot.wim local file too)

________________________________________________________


Now the fun part: the Windows Updates & Mac Driver Package


81 32 Enterprise Installed Quicker and did not have any slow Windows Update Installs or Undoing Changes when I tried to install the Mac Driver Package 2nd, guess the package is 64 and the 32 installs are individual but in the ether.

win 81 64 Did have issues with Installing Updates when I installed the Mac Driver Package 1st.

About to just cut and past a fresh wim2vhd and run windows update first.

_________________Updates:

Ok, so Windows Update is Finicky, if you are tired of it undoing updates try this approach:

figure out all the updates you need then download their .msu files x64/or x86

Run DISM GUI to add these updates to a WIM install file off the DVD or iso

Then Once Windows is installed either by W2Go or a WIM2VHD:
- tell win updates to not download but check for updates
-install the largest update first (tried the smallest to largest didnt work as good)
-then restart
-do this until most all the larger than 20meg updates are installed
-then try the bullk update for all the rest

I prefer Win32 because it is zippier so far on my Patriot Magnum USB3

I get crazy fast reads and writes are way slow in comparrison.

Now to find the W32 drivers for this MacBook Air, there seems to be x64 packages that download from bootcamp.

???Also any Ideas about the Swap File Window that keeps popping up on 1st boot, is there a way to put it in ram successfully?