Steam on bootcamp

[nhk713]

From what I’ve heard, you can’t put bootcamp and an external hard drive without a virtual machine, so would I be able to partition just enough for windows itself and then install steam games onto an external hard drive, or would the external hard drive take up space in my partition?

 

[mr_hyde]

Not sure to have understood well your question...

I have a Mac mini 2018 with Windows (via Bootcamp) on external USB HD.

To install it I had to use VirtualBox, but I repeat: just for the install phase.

In short terms: you take advantage of the possibility to use a real HD (instead of a virtual HD) of VirtualBox.
In this way you can create a temporary virtual machine (that uses the real HD), execute the installation of Windows in this machine. At the end, you have a bootable external HD via Windows (and you can delete the temporary virtual machine).

Warning: you must NOT end the installation, at least that is was written in the guide I found and followed; at the end the Windows installation asks for a reboot, and instead you need to quit/power off VirtualBox.

Warning2: if you have a T2 equipped Mac you need to disable some security settings to allow to boot from external HD.

 

[NewUsername]

From what I’ve heard, you can’t put bootcamp and an external hard drive without a virtual machine, so would I be able to partition just enough for windows itself and then install steam games onto an external hard drive, or would the external hard drive take up space in my partition?

Yes, you can do that. I do exactly the same. I have a 200GB partition for Boot Camp but I only have the bare Windows which is about 37GB right now. I installed Steam on an external SSD and all the games are installed there as well.

 

[Roxy.music]

Yes, you can do that. I do exactly the same. I have a 200GB partition for Boot Camp but I only have the bare Windows which is about 37GB right now. I installed Steam on an external SSD and all the games are installed there as well.

Can you just have the games on an external drive?

 

[NewUsername]

Can you just have the games on an external drive?

Sure. Steam is flexible where you put the games. The only issue you can have is that if the letter of your drive changes (e.g. from E to F), then you need to fix that in Steam. But that's pretty rare.

 

[Roxy.music]

Sure. Steam is flexible where you put the games. The only issue you can have is that if the letter of your drive changes (e.g. from E to F), then you need to fix that in Steam. But that's pretty rare.

Thanks for that