Boot camp on an external hard drive

Is it possible to use bootcamp and run windows on an external hardrive rather than the built in one with out sacrificing speed. Im looking to get a hard drive for all my windows stuff and I was hoping to be able to run windows straight from it but I understand that alot of them dont run fast enough to support running an operating system. Any suggestions as to a hard drive to look at getting. I'd be looking at something about 100 gigs. The most important thing would be running Vista or xp. Any suggestions? Thanks - Peter

I belive there might be a way, I just haven't gotten around to trying this out.
1) use disk utility to partition the external drive to ntfs (i think)
2) attach this disk to a pc and install the OS
3) install refit onto your mac
4) attach the drive via fw800, or even better yet esata, to you mac.
5) Start up your mac
6) choose the win xp option from the boot menu
7) install bootcamp drivers
this seems, in theory, that it should work. but this would probably be an easier solution:
1) use disk utility to partition the external drive to ntfs (i think)
2) install XP onto your internal drive via boot camp.
3) create a disk image of XP
4) drop the files from the image onto your external drive
5) install refit onto your mac
6) attach the drive via fw800, or even better yet esata, to you mac.
7) Start up your mac
8) choose the win xp option from the boot menu for the external drive
9) once you have determined that this works, you can delete the xp partition from your internal drive and you will have all the space of your external drive for XP
I would def think about getting an esata drive and the express card for this solution though.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEAQ7320GB16/
http://refit.sourceforge.net/

Similar Messages

Boot Camp 3 Nightmare - External Hard Drive

Ok, so I install Snow Leopard and updated Boot Camp to version 3.
Half the drivers failed to install for some reason.. I restarted and was greeted by a message: 'Windows is missng hal.dll please re-install'
I didn't mind much I just wiped Windows and reinstalled the whole thing, I only use it for games anyway. Here is where the REAL problems started.
Apple claims you can now read HFS from Windows using Boot Camp. Great, it reads my Mac partition on my internal hard drive, but NOT my HFS external hard drive that has all my games/applications on it. Fine, so I install Mac Drive 7 (which is what I previously used) and even THAT won't recognize it. The hard drive is displayed in 'safely remove devices' but not in 'my computer'. What is going on? I need this drive desperately and it works perfectly on OS X.
I can't find anyone with this kind of problem, I don't want to boot from my external hd, I just want to READ it, not even write to it! Thanks for reading,
Dan

Update:
Using Mac Drive 8 causes an even worse situation. It now mounts my external hard drive, and I can open it and see the first set of folders. At the same time windows does its stupid 'autoplay' search. After I see this first set of folders explorer crashes. I try to force end process and restart it but it doesn't even force close down the process properly.
The situation just gets worse and worse so I in the end I had to force restart my computer. What is going on!!!

Boot camp without deleting external hard drive

Hi,
the external hard drive im using has 2 partitions. One for Time machine backups and one which I would like to use for Windows/Bootcamp.
Is there a way to only delete/format the Windows partition without having to delete the partition used for back ups during boot camp?
thanks

Loner T wrote:
Windows on an external drive is officially supported, but you can use this How to run Boot Camp on External Hard Drive? A TM drive is onto typically used for non-TM purposes either, so please be…
Auto-correct. .
It is NOT supported. Windows-to-Go, Winclone or the link I provided are the options that you have.

Hi, I have a hard disk failure so to recover my data I am using disk utility to restore the data on an external drive while booting from a second external hard drive. When I perform the operation it gives me an input/output error and stops. Any tips?

Hi, I have a hard disk failure so to recover my data I am using disk utility to restore the data on an external drive while booting from a second external hard drive. When I perform the operation and after having selected both my destination and source drives, the operation begins but soon fails due to input/output error. If I try to create an image of the drive it gives me the same error message. Any help would be much appreciated.

Disk Utility only creates a image of the drive, so it's no help getting exactly what you want, which is your files. If the file structure is messed up or the drive is failing then it's no help.
If you have a external boot drive and you can't access the internal non-booting drive though the typical Finder and windows to transfer your files via drag and drop methods, then you need to install Data Rescue on the external boot drive and it will do as best as it can to recover your files. (works on non-encrypted/non-Filevaulted drives only)
.Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive
Are you sure you have hard drive failure, or that OS X isn't merely not booting?
Because if the drive is working physically, then there is a host of fixes
..Step by Step to fix your Mac
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents#/

Can anyone boot Leopard from an external hard drive on an iMacPPC?

Can anyone boot Leopard from an external hard drive on a G5 iMac PowerPC? How?

Allan's answer is irrelevant as he refers to Snow Leopard. He must have isread your post!
Yes, you can and I do. The proviso is that the external hard drive is connected by firewire, as a PPC Mac cannot boot via USB.

How do I back up my Boot Camp partition to external firewire drive?

I have a 15 GB Windows XP Boot Camp partition (FAT32). I want to back it up to a 120 GB external Firewire drive. (I know the backup won't be bootable). In OX X Disk Utility, I formatted the external drive as MS-DOS (FAT). I planned to do the backup using the Windows Backup utility.
However, when booted into WinXP, Windows will not recognize the external hard drive. I thought I might need to create a FAT32 partion of 32 GB or less on the external drive, but I apparently can't do this in OS X or Windows (since Windows doesn't recognize the drive).
Any suggestions on how to backup the Boot Camp partition will be appreciated. I'm mainly interested in preserving all programs and data. Ideally, a clone could be created that could be restored back to the original partition in bootable form, but from studying this and other forums, it dosn't seem to be easy to do this for a FAT32-formatted volume.

My goal was to create a bootable clone of my FAT32 Boot Camp partition, while at the same time increasing the size of the partition from 15 GB to 32 GB if possible. This is what I did:
1. As suggested in this thread, I used Disk Utility to create a disk image. I formatted it as MS-DOS (FAT), and made it 32 GB in size.
2. Used the Finder to copy all files from my 15 GB Windows XP partition to the new disk image.
The following steps were only to determine if the disk image is a viable backup:
3. Removed the internal hard drive with my original Win XP partition, and installed a new internal hard drive.
4. Used Boot Camp Assistant to create a 32 GB Boot Camp partition on the new internal drive.
5. Inserted my Win XP installation disk and started the Windows installation. Formatted the new partition as FAT32. (I used the long rather than the quick format method--not sure if this was necessary.)
6. Continued the Windows installation to the point of restarting the computer, at which time I used the Option key to boot back into OS X.
7. Used the Finder to copy all the files from the 32 GB disk image to the new Boot Camp partition. (This overwrote a few Windows files installed by the aborted Win XP installation.)
8. Restarted and used the Option key to select the new 32 GB Boot Camp Partition. Windows booted as usual with all files, programs, etc. from the original 15 GB partition. Windows did complain about "new hardware" and required a restart, but all appears normal.
This indicates that the disk image containing all the files from my original Boot Camp partition is a viable backup, and can be used to restore the partition if necessary. I'm not sure if formatting the disk image as MS-DOS (rather than Mac OS extended) was necessary, or not.

How do I install and BOOT Windows 7 on External Hard Drive?

Please please please help! I've been browsing the net for 2 days straight and can't find a decent answer.
I've partitioned my external hard drive (Western Digital Passport) using Disk Utility.
I have 4 paritions in total; 2 intended for Mac and 2 intended for Windows.
I used a GUID partition table for all 4 as displayed on the below picture.
Although I should note that when my external hard disk is booted in Windows it says that it uses Master Boot Record, please see picture 2 below.
I formatted the Mac Partitions to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and the Windows Partitions to ExFat.
The Macs work beautifully; having successfully installed and booted Snow Leopard on them, and then backed up my 2 internal Mac Drives to them.
However, the Windows ones are a complete nightmare and I have no idea how to installl Windows 7 and then use them from there.
Can anyone offer a solution? I've heard so many conflicting ideas about this that it's made me dizzy just reading it all.
Thanks!

Yeah, I use Windows on bootcamp for both my Imac and my Macbook Pro.
In fact, seeing as my Mac partition on my external hard drive was successful i.e. I installed and can boot from them any time I like, couldn't I just use the external hard drive's partitions' bootcamp assistant and install/boot windows on there?

2013 new Mac Pro will not boot up from and external hard drive

New 2013 MAC PRO running Yosemite will not not see a bootable external hard drive when starting up using option key? Same External hard drive will boot up on 2013 Mac Book Pro running Yosemite.

Reading between tea leaves sometimes leaves some things to imagination.
You used SuperDuper latest version that was recently upgraded for Yosemite on a laptop running 10.10 (or even 10.9.3+) that is in a X-brand USB3 drive enclosure, not bus powered btw, moved it to the nMP and plugged it into a direct port, not going through a hub (monitors have hubs of course and there is only one real bus+controller on the nMP that ALL USB3 travels through.
Thunderbolt and self-powered would be nice but they cost a bit more.
I have read where Carbon Copy Cloner (now v 4.x) worked where others failed. I use to use both but have used CCC since its inception and use back in 10.2.2 forward along with SD! for a few years based on comments here.
Drivers missing? someone compared system extensions and found the ones needed for say the nMP are not there? how about running a 10.10.1 combo update and see if that changes - we USE to be able to apply updates to a system that we were not booted from, very handy (could update a sparse disk image of a system that way, one created with CCC).
WD Passports seem popular with laptop users, but they come here to this forum complaining that it doesn't work, disappears off the bus (spins down goes to sleep, acts like a green drive acts).

Boot Camp / XP made my hard drive disappear

Running on a 20" Intel iMac w/ 10.4.6 and the latest updates. Also installed the latest firmware upgrade prior to this exercise.
Ran Boot Camp and created the Mac Driver CD and a 10G partition.
Then, booted from my XP disk and when it took me to the 'choose partition' screen, there was only one drive listed, as C:, of 130G. Shouldn't this have been the 10G partition? And shouldn't the OS X partition have shown up as it does in the documentation for Boot Camp? BTW, my drive is the 250G and had about 155G remaining before I started.
When I saw that, I dared not select and format, so I quit the XP installation.
Now, it only wants to boot into XP. Holding the Option key upon bootup only displays one disk to choose from, Windows. And of course, there's no XP for it to boot into, so it's just a flashing cursor on a black screen.
When I use the OS X Install Disk's Disk Utility, it does not even see my original OS X HD. All that shows up is the Maxtor drive with no installed disk information at all (no sub-drive or partitions under Maxtor).
Selecting Startup Drive doesn't do it either since my HD does not show up - only the CD drive and the Network choices.
And even if I wanted to reinstall OS X, I can't because there's no Destination drive to choose from in the installer!!!
How do I remove XP from the boot partition (is there even a boot partition on these things)? I'm sure the data on the disk was not deleted as I never let the XP installer actually do anything to the existing drives and Boot Camp is not supposed to actually delete any data.
Needless to say, any help would be appreciated.
20" iMac (Intel Core Duo) Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Its funny....I got my new INTEL IMAC set it up with all my old IMACs information 3 hours or so of work (Itunes...Iphoto)
and in 12 minutes....it had no bootable harddrive...and no volume information for disk utility to work with.
I saw your post...and that partition size (130 GB) was exactly the same as mine (I had created a 60gig windows Partition).
Did you ever figure out what happened.....I had not backed anything up....because I had never had this issue with a piece of Apple Software Before...and since I did not even hit F3 to create the windows partition...I thought I would be safe.
So it must have been the original Partition change in Boot Camp that destroyed OS X?
I bought Parallels product in the meantime...but it does not have very good graphics support, and it looks like it will not run certain CDROM games...due to copy protection (Keeps looking for the CDROM that is already in the drive).
So...I am going to backup everything to an external drive and see what happens.....again

Can I boot mac from an external hard drive (internal hard drive hard drive closure)

Model: Macbook Pro 2010 mid
OS: OSX 10.9 Hard Drive: WD5000BPKT 500GB
For some reason I need to change my perfectly working internal bootable drive to external bootable drive.
I took out my internal hard drive, put it into closure, and then connected it to mbp with USB. But my mac cannot even recognize my external hard drive. It displays a folder with a question mark with grey background, which means it cannot find executable boot drive. I tried pressing option key during start up and nothing showed. Also, I tried resetting parameter RAM but still no luck. Any help will be appreciated.

The reason is somehow complicated and most likely be related to the question itself, so I did not write it down. But here is the situation.
I bought a new SSD to update my HDD. I found a software called carbon copy cloner, which could do a bootable clone. I tried to clone my original hard drive to SSD and turned out the SSD only worked when it was connected externally. After I seeking a while, I found a solution from CCC website: do the clone again with putting my original drive externally and the SSD internally (I think it is a bug of CCC.)
You may say, "why not use time machine" instead of using a third party software. My answer is time machine is too slow, and I have to reinstall the OS. My focus is why my internal hard drive does not work externally since it should work.

How to boot off of my external hard drive?

How can I achieve this?

What kind of drive do you have? (3.5" or 2.5" FireWire, USB 2.0 or something else?) Have you formatted the drive with the GUID partitioning scheme? (Using the Disk Utility.) Have you installed Mac OS X to the hard drive? Those are the two steps you'll need to follow to make a bootable external hard drive.
-Doug

I want to install windows7 on my 27in iMAC. I have an OEM version of Win7 which is win pro 7, 64 bit english. I will use boot camp to partion the hard drive for a win7 install. Can I use this version for the installation ??

My iMAC is a 2011 3.4 GHz intel i7 based with a 27in display. A year ago, I bought a Microsoft win pro 7 64-bit english OEM OS to install over a newly assembled AMD PC. I never installed it. Now, I want to put it on my iMAC using either Apple Bootcamp or Parallels. The win 7 OEM package has a lot of verbage about using an OEM preinstallation kit (OPK) and that it must be preinstalled on the hard drive. Is it OK to install this win7 version following the Bootcamp instructions.?
K6JPJ

Please post in the Boot Camp (not Bootcamp) forum I'm sure someone there can answer your quesiton if no one here is able to.

Portege M200: Booting from SD to external hard drive

"M200 Recovery using Floppy or SD Card
Posted: 15-Aug-2005 10:36
I am posting this in the hope it will help others seeking to use the recovery CD/DVD but without a bootable CD drive. I would like to acknowledge the Toshiba forum of TabletPCBuzz.com
http://tabletpcbuzz.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=12414
for the inspiration of how it was done.
1. You will need a floppy drive or an SD card plus any type of CD drive. If your M200 is not working properly you will also need access to another computer to prepare the floppy disk.
2. You will need to download some software: IsoBuster
http://www.isobuster.com/
and WinImage
http://www.winimage.com/
or similar programs.
3. Put the Recovery CD into any computer and run IsoBuster. Click on Bootable CD on the left and then on the right you should see an .img file of size 1.41MB on the right. On my CD it's called Arnes Boot Record.img. Right click on it and extract the file. Close IsoBuster
4. Open WinImage and then File/Open this .img file. This will be your boot floppy with all the CD drivers you need. In Disk, ensure Use Floppy A: is ticked then Disk/Write Disk. Close WinImage
5. Connect floppy and CD drives to your M200, and boot up from the floppy. It will take some time to find the CD but it will and you will eventually get the recovery screen.
That's it! If don't have a floppy drive but have an SD card and a working M200 then Toshiba's SD card program will put the .img file onto the SD card and you can then boot from there.
There is a good chance this method will work for other Toshiba notebooks but I can't check this"
(author stephem)
This works!
What i would like to know is, is it possible to somehow boot of the SD and instead of the CD drive it finds my external ide to USB hard drive and boots off of the windows on that?
Thanks.

Hi there
I hope after long time you will end your problem. The compatible ODDs for your Portege M200 are:
1) Toshiba, PA3352E-SCD2, USB2.0 CD-RW/DVD-Rom Drive
2) Toshiba, PA3402E-1DV2, Rev.501, USB2.0 DVD Super Multi Drive,
3) Toshiba, PX1055E-1NST, (Freecom drive), with a PC Card (16bit), Cable II, PCMCIA,
4) Toshiba, PX1055E-1NST, (Freecom drive), with a CardBus, Cable II, CARD BUS
When you install recovery image be sure that external device has enough power supply. I recommend you to use AC power supply adapter for external ODD (if available).
I have also found info you can use:
a) Toshiba, PA3352E-SCD2, USB2.0 CD-RW/DVD-Rom Drive
b) Toshiba, PA3402E-1DV2, USB2.0 DVD Super Multi Drive
I hope you will find out which one is the best for you.
Good luck!

Is it possible to use Boot Camp on a second hard drive?

I would like to buy a new drive to install which will be used entirely for boot camp. Is it possible to use a second installed drive for Boot Camp?

Yup, right now I'm running Windows Vista on a second hard drive I installed right when I got my new system.

Can I reinstall Windows in Boot Camp without unpartitioning my hard drive?

Hi!
I've had my iMac with Boot Camp for a while, and I'm the kind of person that likes to download lots of junk. On my Mac partition, I downloaded Parallels, and used it with my windows partition. Later that day, I found out that using Parallels with a Boot Camp partition can corrupt files, which is what happened. My Windows partition still works, but it's a little screwy.
So, I was wondering if I can reinstall Windows XP without unpartitioning my hard drive, and without effecting Mac OS X.
Thanks~

Yes. It is quite straightforward - you boot into OS X, insert your Windows install disk, go to Applications (or is it Utilities?) open BootCamp - the Assistant opens. Then you ignore the partition options and just click on install Windows. BootCamp should be used for all things Windows.. ....I myself originally made the mistake of re-installing Windows one time while IN Windows (I didn't even think). I made a mess!
Edit
My machine came with Tiger. I was sooooo impressed when I purchased Leopard that I could choose to do an erase/install of OS X without even touching the Windows side. Really nice - I still have that original Windows install untouched!
Message was edited by: NA Smith

Boot camp on an external hard drive

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