Windows from a FireWire HDD?

[DeathToPCs]

Is it possible to boot into Windows on a firewire HardDrive? I know that I can boot into OSX on it but can I do Windows on it?

 

[Nermal]

Nope.

Edit: Not easily anyway, but there might be a trick to it.

 

[balahir]

Nope.

Edit: Not easily anyway, but there might be a trick to it.

I plan to buy an Iomega Minimax to my Intel MacMini, install OSX on that HD and then through BootCamp install XP/Vista to have a faster system for both OS. You mean that it is not possible to install XP/Vista on this external HD???

Thanks for input (before I buy the MiniMax).

 

[DeathToPCs]

From what I have heard so far I dont think it is possible to do so. But if there is anyone out there that has booted Windows XP from a External HDD via USB/FireWire please let me know.

 

[7on]

it's because Windows can't boot from external drives.

PS: Bootcamp is only partitioning software. You can put in the Windows install CD and boot off of the CD without Bootcamp.

 

[balamw]

it's because Windows can't boot from external drives.

The problem is that the USB/FireWire drivers get re-initialized during boot.

There's a hack to keep the USB drivers loaded, but I haven't heard of one for FireWire.

B

 

[mrichmon]

Is it possible to boot into Windows on a firewire HardDrive? I know that I can boot into OSX on it but can I do Windows on it?

Windows doesn't play nicely with firewire at all. Booting Windows off any firewire drive does not work.

Windows kind of plays ok with USB. The problem is that Windows unloads and reloads the USB driver partway through the boot process which screws things up if you are booting off a USB drive. However, people have hacked the Windows install disk to prevent the unload/reload of the USB driver and reportedly have been able to get windows to boot off a USB drive.

I haven't had a chance to try this approach with my MacBook yet.

 

[balamw]

However, people have hacked the Windows install disk to prevent the unload/reload of the USB driver and reportedly have been able to get windows to boot off a USB drive.

Thanks. That's the hack I was referring to in my post. I haven't tried it either. I just have a small boot partition in my iMac and keep all the large data files on an external FAT32 FW drive.

B

 

[live4ever]

What about eSATA drives - has anyone tried one of them? You'd probably have to have Windows already installed on the MBP's internal so you can load the drivers for whatever SATA Expresscard you're using - but maybe it's possible.

 

[balamw]

What about eSATA drives - has anyone tried one of them? You'd probably have to have Windows already installed on the MBP's internal so you can load the drivers for whatever SATA Expresscard you're using - but maybe it's possible.

eSATA could probably be handled within the firmware/BIOS/EFI level, which could make this very attractive. (e.g. Windows boots fine on my Dell which uses a SATA PCI card and loads its own BIOS extensions).

I'm looking forward to the day that Apple puts eSATA ports on the Mac Mini and other machines that could benefit from large/fast external drives...

B

 

[balahir]

OK, thanks a lot for your help, all above. I will stick with the internal disk for a while. Also read that the latest build of Vista (5456) has much improved performance, which will make Vista feel more snappy anyway. Downloading now... 😉