Windows 7 from Firewire?

[Zortrium]

Simple question here -- is it possible to boot a Windows 7 installation that's on a Firewire 800 drive? I've searched and found many similar situations but none that seem to be identical to mine -- I previously installed a BC partition on my iMac's internal drive, then swapped it out for an SSD, so now I've got an already-installed BC partition on my Firewire drive. VMware Fusion still recognizes the external BC partition and can boot it just fine, and Mac OS X still sees it as a valid boot option when I hold down the option key. However, when I select it, I just get a Windows console that says something like "No boot media detected -- insert boot media and press any key" and then there's nothing I can do to proceed.

So am I out of luck or is there a way to get Windows to boot?

EDIT: Eh, looks like it's not really feasible given the information in this thread. Ah well.

 

[balamw]

It seems to depend quite heavily on the particular enclosure, but one user here did report success. I will see if I can find that thread.

Have you considered running Windows Startup Repair wizard from the W7 install media? The BCD entries are probably wrong for Boot Camp now that the partition "moved".

B

 

[Mac-key]

It seems to depend quite heavily on the particular enclosure, but one user here did report success. I will see if I can find that thread.

Have you considered running Windows Startup Repair wizard from the W7 install media? The BCD entries are probably wrong for Boot Camp now that the partition "moved".

B

That would be me I used winclone to make an image of my bootcamp partition. I then restored it to my external drive - a western digital. With said drive connected via firewire I then rebooted my computer, held down the "option" key and three bootable HD's were displayed - my OS X, WIN7 bootcamp, and the external HD. I then selected the external HD and it booted right up.

I've read several posts that say others have not been able to do this, but it did work once for me. Never tried it again though.

 

[balamw]

Yup. That's the one I was thinking of. The thread is here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1042683/

B

 

[Zortrium]

I'm wondering if the fact that you still had an internal BC partition allowed you to do that. I just tried booting a Win 7 recovery disc and it just gave me a message about being a nonmatching version of Windows (despite being 64-bit like my BC partition).