Windows-to-go over FireWire

[joshjohnson]

I was wondering if anyone has tried using a windows to go installation over FireWire. I’m interested since I have a 2009 Mac mini I put a 120gb ssd in to and want to keep Mac OS X on the internal drive with all available space. That mini has a FireWire 800 port and I have several SATA adapters that would let me install windows to a disk I can plug in to the FireWire port as well as the usual USB. I’d like to use FireWire 800 because it would be much faster then usb2.

 

[toke lahti]

I was wondering if anyone has tried using a windows to go installation over FireWire. I’m interested since I have a 2009 Mac mini I put a 120gb ssd in to and want to keep Mac OS X on the internal drive with all available space. That mini has a FireWire 800 port and I have several SATA adapters that would let me install windows to a disk I can plug in to the FireWire port as well as the usual USB. I’d like to use FireWire 800 because it would be much faster then usb2.

I installed win10 to external hdd for my mm2012 with this guide:
https://blog.macsales.com/40947-tech-tip-how-to-use-boot-camp-on-an-external-drive
(Remember to leave out quotation marks from virtual drive's name and keep ejecting the target drive from Finder, so that virtualbox's win installation is not interfered.)
I did the installation with usb(3) and I can't boot to win10 through fw.
Maybe because win10 disk is MBR?
Maybe I have time to make new install next week with GPT...

 

[joshjohnson]

I installed win10 to external hdd for my mm2012 with this guide:
https://blog.macsales.com/40947-tech-tip-how-to-use-boot-camp-on-an-external-drive
(Remember to leave out quotation marks from virtual drive's name and keep ejecting the target drive from Finder, so that virtualbox's win installation is not interfered.)
I did the installation with usb(3) and I can't boot to win10 through fw.
Maybe because win10 disk is MBR?
Maybe I have time to make new install next week with GPT...

There is the distinct and upsetting possibility Windows loads the USB drivers before every thing else if it sees the boot device is a USB disk but can’t do the same if the disk is connected via FireWire. There are WinPE FireWire drivers but I only checked that as of windows XP honestly. Win 10 may have deprecated FireWire drivers. I’d be curious to see someone try booting a hard disk over FireWire with windows 10, 8.1, 7 and vista.

 

[MasterMoron]

Running into the same issue, luckily the external drive has both USB 2 and FW connections. I installed it on a GPT formatted drive. I just got the bootcamp driver's installed through USB and was able to get to the windows logo when trying to boot over FW, but no luck with a full FW boot yet.

This is for a 2011 iMac, do no USB 3... Would have been so much easier...

 

[joshjohnson]

Running into the same issue, luckily the external drive has both USB 2 and FW connections. I installed it on a GPT formatted drive. I just got the bootcamp driver's installed through USB and was able to get to the windows logo when trying to boot over FW, but no luck with a full FW boot yet.

This is for a 2011 iMac, do no USB 3... Would have been so much easier...

In the case of your 2011 iMac, you have the option of adding USB3 over thunderbolt. Apple sells a $79 adapter with ESATA and usb 3 ports that may work for windows boot ups after the boot camp drivers are installed (to power the thunderbolt interface)