Will Win7 Bootcamp drive work in external enclosure

[Piplodocus]

Hello!

Gonna swap out my current HDD (with OSX and Win7 on) to put a bigger one in. Can I boot up the Win7 bootcamp partition still if I put it in an external USB enclosure?

Also, if I can (or even if I can't) what's the easiest way of backing up/copying/restoring/transferring all my Win7 setup/apps over to the new drive's bootcamp partition? Can I boot the new Win7 install and do some kind of transfer from another windows partition thing (on the USB drive), kinda like you can in OSX? I could do a windows backup first, then do a restore but I'd have to find and partition another external drive, which seems silly if I have the original full version in an external USB enclosure.

 

[DaGr8Gatzby]

I do not believe this will work due to the way USB reinitializes itself numerous times during install.

 

[shortcut3d]

It should work in a Thunderbolt enclosure. Installing Windows 7 to a Thunderbolt drive is another problem, but booting an existing installation doesn't appear to be an issue.

 

[Piplodocus]

Don't have thunderbolt. It's a mid-2010.

The plan was to boot an already installed version of Windows 7 that was previously on a bootcamp internal drive, and has now been put in an external enclosure. Appears the answer is no. It starts trying to boot then complains about a lack of boot device in a Windowsy looking font.

 

[cagen]

you can use winclone to backup the drive and create a immage. Swap the drives and then use bootcamp to make a new partition on the new drive (with the same size as before preferably) and then extract the immage to the new drive. Thats the easiest way that i know of....

Also i would not trust that you can boot from external enclosures as i have experienced manny issues whn booting from USB devices on the mid 2010 MBP

 

[Piplodocus]

you can use winclone to backup the drive and create a immage. Swap the drives and then use bootcamp to make a new partition on the new drive (with the same size as before preferably) and then extract the immage to the new drive. Thats the easiest way that i know of....

Is that any better or easier than just using the Windows 7 backup/restore image function?

 

[cagen]

in my opinion it is better and faster.... i dont trust on that much windows software

 

[Piplodocus]

Done it. Not too painful compared with last time. No 3rd party apps...

• Used windows 7 backup from in control panel with it creating an image.
• Restarted with new drive and used OSX Lion disk to partition the drive with a fat32, and HFS+ partition, and most importantly GUID partition map.
• Boot with Win7 install disk.
• Do "Repair Windows" from first menus and restore the Windows 7 Partition from the windows backup image. "Formats" the Drive but doesn't mess with the partition map. Dunno if windows 7 defaults to GUID these days but I didn't want to end up with a MBR partition map.
• Boot into it and do the required Windows restarts. (Kinda like a Clumsy Time Machine! )
• Start off OSX lion DVD.
• Check partitions with disk utility and install Lion on the rest.
• Restore Time Machine for OS Lion drive.
• Win. Pop open the bubbly and tins of caviar.

∞ Fini ∞​

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