Is it possible to install and boot Windows 10 directly from a FireWire 800 enclosure running an SSD? It's impossible for me to install it on the internal drive, so this is the only option other than god-awful USB 2 which I won't even attempt to touch. I remember with XP this was difficult, but not sure if this has changed since those days.
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Windows 10 on FireWire 800 external drive?
- Thread starter retta283
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It might be possible with an EFI installation, which is a pain on it's own to achieve. The BIOS emulator won't boot from anything but the internal buses.
I don't think Windows can boot from FW at all though, even on a PC. IIRC it loads the drivers later in the boot process, and has no native support for it like Mac OS does. It used to not boot on USB either but I feel like that's been done now.
I know 8 and up can officially boot from USB ("Windows to go")
I've unsuccessfully checked a few options this morning both on an early-2008 17"MBP (MojavePatch) and a mid-2009 15"MBP (Win10pro), which all didn't work (unfortunately I have no Win10DVD at hands but did all my recent Win10 installations through my old Win7/Win8 disks/registrations and went through the still available Windows10Upgrade procedure).
- tried to install Win7DVD to external USB-drive (NTFS): not successful to format the external USB-drive
- tried to install Win7DVD to external FireWire400-drive (NTFS): not successful to format of the external FireWire-drive
- tried to boot the early-2008 MBP through FireWire800 from the MBP(Win10pro) in TargetDiskMode: the Win10pro-disk in TDM shows up in the BootManager's selection-screen but booting from the Windows-drive was rejected afterwards.
- formatted the drive through a windows-machine. Then used PartitionMagic(Win) to create 3 partitions (1.macOS/2.BootCamp/3.Data) within Windows. Cloned macOS to the dedicated partition No.1. Tried another installation Win8DVD to the partitioned drive:
-- first attempt with the drive as external USB-drive: Win-Install refused to install onto an external USB/FireWire-drive (showing a message box with that information)
-- second attempt with the drive installed into a Unibody early-2008 13" MacBook: Win-Install refuses to install onto any of the provided partitions until I did erase everythin on the drive and dedicated the whole drive to the windows installation. 😬
- Next: 1) Win-Install (single partition) => 2) partition drive with PartitionWizard (bootable-CD) into 1.Win/2.[macOS]/3.Data => 3) trying to install Mac to "2.[macOS]": failed too! DiskUtility cannot "erase" partition No.3 to HFS+
My conclusion: I don't know, how Apple does the trick to fit both Apple and Windows-universes onto a single harddrive without file-systems not getting mixed up.
I guess, magic that is. Otherwise ha! - Windows can't deal with drives partitioned by Mac and vice versa.
Well, for me the only conclusion is: "two systems on two drives" ... is that a bug or a feature?
Here my experiences with converting "Early-intels" into Win10Pro-machines during the last week:
the attempts to install Win7/8 onto two early-2009 24"iMacs and onto a mid-2009 15"MBP had also not been successful with the BootCamp Assistants of ElCapitan, HighSierraPatch and MojavePatch.
So I simply added a second partition for the Windows-installation using DiskUtility - in some instances the macOS partition was HFS+, in others APFS. Anyway, in both situations the Windows-Setup was not able to use the dedicated second partition for a Windows-installation.
So I went on within Windows-Installation-Setup and deleted one partition after the other and only after the whole drive had been erased and reformatted through the Windows-setup-routine, installation of Win7/8 was possible and also the additional Win10Upgrade went fine.
For the MBP a USB-mouse is required as long as the touchpad drivers have not been installed.
At the end of all effords I've got a Win10Pro-machine but lost macOS and Dual-Boot.
It's ok, since I urgently need a few additional Win10pro clients until the end of February, because then my Win2008Server has to be replaced by a Win10pro workstation (as the new FileServer), but that setting lacks the option of multiple TerminalClients-sessions and I am loosing the option of multiple RPD-connections with legacy Macs/OSX.
After the installation of Win7/8 and the Upgrade to Win10 I ran the BootCamp-setup "manually":
I previously was able to download and save the BootCamp setup-files and drivers through the BootCamp-Assistant of ElCapitan and Mojave despite of failed attempts to install Windows through BootCamp Assistent.
1) Installing the ElCapitan-BootCamp version (since ElCapitan was the last officially supported OSX/Win-version for my specific iMacs and MBP): on the MBP the ElCap-BootCamp-Setup.exe did work fine (creating the BootCamp-Taskbar-Icon and BootCamp-system-settings on the MBP), but it did not work on the iMacs, so I had to install the 64-bit drivers manually and currently do not have any Bootcamp-system-setting nor a Taskbar-icon.)
2) Installing the Mojave-BootCamp-version (since Win10 is officially first supported with Mojave and (in my case) the mid-2012 15"MBP I chose the version of Mojave in combination with the Win10-installation): The BootCamp-setup.exe didn't work on both c2duo Macs (the mid-2009 MBP and early 2009 iMacs) therefore I manually chose the 64-bit drivers out of the BootCamp drivers-folder.
After finishing the driver-installations so far Win10pro works pretty decently on all of the chosen early-intel Macs, but there's no second partition for DualBoot.
Since the optical drive of my 15"MBP is beyond repair, I've ordered a 10$ drive-caddy for the optical-drive-bay to get a separate SSD for macOS/MojavePatch.
Now I have a dual-boot-option on this particular "dual-drive" MBP.
I'm quite happy with that now, because I think it will be more resiliant than having macOS and Win10 on a single drive. (Well that dual-drive workaround is not a good option and much more hassle for an iMac, especially a working optical drive has to be sacrified.)
If it wasn't for the limitation of the slow USB2 I would have also checked, if it's possible to boot that Win10-SSD from an external USB-case.
So back to the OP's primary question:
There's a video on YT showing how to create a Win10-Installation onto an external USB-SSD-drive and that guy's iMac runs Win10 with a pretty decent speed. But it's a late intel-iMac with faster CPU and USB 3.0 and not to compare with an Early-Intel Mac, that only sport USB2.
@Amethyst1 already mentioned "Windows to go" in his above posting, and in the video there's also some "Windows To Go"-magic involved, which I didn't understand properly.
I wonder, if "blessing" a Win10 installation that way would make it a bootable FireWire-drive too and maybe fast enough for Early Intels ...
- tried to install Win7DVD to external USB-drive (NTFS): not successful to format the external USB-drive
- tried to install Win7DVD to external FireWire400-drive (NTFS): not successful to format of the external FireWire-drive
- tried to boot the early-2008 MBP through FireWire800 from the MBP(Win10pro) in TargetDiskMode: the Win10pro-disk in TDM shows up in the BootManager's selection-screen but booting from the Windows-drive was rejected afterwards.
- formatted the drive through a windows-machine. Then used PartitionMagic(Win) to create 3 partitions (1.macOS/2.BootCamp/3.Data) within Windows. Cloned macOS to the dedicated partition No.1. Tried another installation Win8DVD to the partitioned drive:
-- first attempt with the drive as external USB-drive: Win-Install refused to install onto an external USB/FireWire-drive (showing a message box with that information)
-- second attempt with the drive installed into a Unibody early-2008 13" MacBook: Win-Install refuses to install onto any of the provided partitions until I did erase everythin on the drive and dedicated the whole drive to the windows installation. 😬
- Next: 1) Win-Install (single partition) => 2) partition drive with PartitionWizard (bootable-CD) into 1.Win/2.[macOS]/3.Data => 3) trying to install Mac to "2.[macOS]": failed too! DiskUtility cannot "erase" partition No.3 to HFS+
My conclusion: I don't know, how Apple does the trick to fit both Apple and Windows-universes onto a single harddrive without file-systems not getting mixed up.
I guess, magic that is. Otherwise ha! - Windows can't deal with drives partitioned by Mac and vice versa.
Well, for me the only conclusion is: "two systems on two drives" ... is that a bug or a feature?
Here my experiences with converting "Early-intels" into Win10Pro-machines during the last week:
the attempts to install Win7/8 onto two early-2009 24"iMacs and onto a mid-2009 15"MBP had also not been successful with the BootCamp Assistants of ElCapitan, HighSierraPatch and MojavePatch.
So I simply added a second partition for the Windows-installation using DiskUtility - in some instances the macOS partition was HFS+, in others APFS. Anyway, in both situations the Windows-Setup was not able to use the dedicated second partition for a Windows-installation.
So I went on within Windows-Installation-Setup and deleted one partition after the other and only after the whole drive had been erased and reformatted through the Windows-setup-routine, installation of Win7/8 was possible and also the additional Win10Upgrade went fine.
For the MBP a USB-mouse is required as long as the touchpad drivers have not been installed.
At the end of all effords I've got a Win10Pro-machine but lost macOS and Dual-Boot.
It's ok, since I urgently need a few additional Win10pro clients until the end of February, because then my Win2008Server has to be replaced by a Win10pro workstation (as the new FileServer), but that setting lacks the option of multiple TerminalClients-sessions and I am loosing the option of multiple RPD-connections with legacy Macs/OSX.
After the installation of Win7/8 and the Upgrade to Win10 I ran the BootCamp-setup "manually":
I previously was able to download and save the BootCamp setup-files and drivers through the BootCamp-Assistant of ElCapitan and Mojave despite of failed attempts to install Windows through BootCamp Assistent.
1) Installing the ElCapitan-BootCamp version (since ElCapitan was the last officially supported OSX/Win-version for my specific iMacs and MBP): on the MBP the ElCap-BootCamp-Setup.exe did work fine (creating the BootCamp-Taskbar-Icon and BootCamp-system-settings on the MBP), but it did not work on the iMacs, so I had to install the 64-bit drivers manually and currently do not have any Bootcamp-system-setting nor a Taskbar-icon.)
2) Installing the Mojave-BootCamp-version (since Win10 is officially first supported with Mojave and (in my case) the mid-2012 15"MBP I chose the version of Mojave in combination with the Win10-installation): The BootCamp-setup.exe didn't work on both c2duo Macs (the mid-2009 MBP and early 2009 iMacs) therefore I manually chose the 64-bit drivers out of the BootCamp drivers-folder.
After finishing the driver-installations so far Win10pro works pretty decently on all of the chosen early-intel Macs, but there's no second partition for DualBoot.
Since the optical drive of my 15"MBP is beyond repair, I've ordered a 10$ drive-caddy for the optical-drive-bay to get a separate SSD for macOS/MojavePatch.
Now I have a dual-boot-option on this particular "dual-drive" MBP.
I'm quite happy with that now, because I think it will be more resiliant than having macOS and Win10 on a single drive. (Well that dual-drive workaround is not a good option and much more hassle for an iMac, especially a working optical drive has to be sacrified.)
If it wasn't for the limitation of the slow USB2 I would have also checked, if it's possible to boot that Win10-SSD from an external USB-case.
So back to the OP's primary question:
There's a video on YT showing how to create a Win10-Installation onto an external USB-SSD-drive and that guy's iMac runs Win10 with a pretty decent speed. But it's a late intel-iMac with faster CPU and USB 3.0 and not to compare with an Early-Intel Mac, that only sport USB2.
@Amethyst1 already mentioned "Windows to go" in his above posting, and in the video there's also some "Windows To Go"-magic involved, which I didn't understand properly.
I wonder, if "blessing" a Win10 installation that way would make it a bootable FireWire-drive too and maybe fast enough for Early Intels ...
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To make a long story short:
- no install of Win7/8 onto an external drives (Win-Install says: no FireWire/USB)
- no booting from a FireWire-drive (e.g. no boot from Win10 on MBP in TDM)
- no install of Win onto an OSX-partitioned drive
- no install of OSX onto a Win-partitioned drive
- for two systems (OSX/Win) better take two drives
- BootCamp Assistant magic that is!
(I hope someone might proove better - I did the best I could with my humble means ... )
- no install of Win7/8 onto an external drives (Win-Install says: no FireWire/USB)
- no booting from a FireWire-drive (e.g. no boot from Win10 on MBP in TDM)
- no install of Win onto an OSX-partitioned drive
- no install of OSX onto a Win-partitioned drive
- for two systems (OSX/Win) better take two drives
- BootCamp Assistant magic that is!
(I hope someone might proove better - I did the best I could with my humble means ... )
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If you add a FAT32 partition on the same drive in Disk Utility it will do the same thing that bootcamp assistant does; create an MBR/GPT hybrid partition map.
It’s actually extremely annoying as Windows 7 is perfectly capable of booting from GPT all by itself.
It causes problems on Windows 10 too.
This has been problematic for me. This method does work to partition the drive if there's only one partition on the drive already. If I have 2 or more, the partition creates fine but the Windows installation fails completely. I have found no way to get Windows and 2 OS X installs on the same drive, which is a shame.
I installed in this order OS X - OS X - Windows, perhaps OS X - Windows - OS X would be the way to make it work? I recall Windows needing to be the last partition on the drive though...
You can just not format the new partition FAT32. Use anything else, even HFS. As long as you know which partition is the one you want to install on the Windows installer should be able to format it to NTFS. I'm pretty sure OS X only converts it to the MBR\GPT hybrid when adding a FAT32 partition, so this shouldn't happen if you create a different kind of partition. ExFAT should work in theory, but I haven't tested that. The only benefit would be a label for the partition in the Windows installer, as it will have to be formatted NTFS for Windows to install anyways.
I think you can also repartition using a third party tool such as iPartition and not get stuck with the hybrid scheme but I'm not 100% sure.
I don't know if Windows needs to be the last partition on the drive, I don't recall anything like that. If it does it's not a Windows limitation it's a BIOS emulator one. The BIOS emulator is actually pretty crippling.
Formatting the disk goes fine, it's just that for some reason it pukes either when trying to copy the files for installation or during the installation itself. I haven't been able to find the exact reason for this, I'm using the same DVD that I've successfully used on a number of other Macs with the two-partition setup.
Yes this is a known problem, the fix is not using the hybrid MBR/GPT.
The setup gets to the "Copying Files" bullet, then errors out. It will happen usually in the same spot every time.
Oh, there seem to be a lot of ways to have trouble with mixed MBR/GPT partitions.
I think, this is too unpredictable, not only on the first istallation but also, if I'd like to change any partition size or use, so my decission is to stay off from any attempts to fit both macOS and Windows onto the same drive - even if BootCamp should work ...
@Project Alice one of my attemps has been to erase the drive using HFS+, then create two partitions and erase the second one using FAT32. Even after I did that, Win7-Installer refused to install onto the FAT32-partition. Maybe, because I didn't changed GPT to MBR for the FAT32-partition?
I really don't get the clue ...
I think, this is too unpredictable, not only on the first istallation but also, if I'd like to change any partition size or use, so my decission is to stay off from any attempts to fit both macOS and Windows onto the same drive - even if BootCamp should work ...
@Project Alice one of my attemps has been to erase the drive using HFS+, then create two partitions and erase the second one using FAT32. Even after I did that, Win7-Installer refused to install onto the FAT32-partition. Maybe, because I didn't changed GPT to MBR for the FAT32-partition?
I really don't get the clue ...
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Hmm. I am not sure if that would work or not to avoid the hybrid MBR. I'm pretty sure iPartition or another 3rd part app would though. Try this guide, just scroll down to the part about the MBR\GPT hybrid partition and ignore the USB drive part. Unless you're installing a 2009 Mac Windows will more than likely not work properly in EFI mode.