Boot Windows XP on external drive?

I would like to partition one of my externals to use XP. I do not want to use my internal drive since I am tight on space. Is this possible? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

In order to install Windows you need to use Boot Camp. Check in the Boot Camp forum.
http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=237
Off hand I'd say no.

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Booting Windows Off An External Drive

I have (access to) an Intel Mac Mini which is quite capable of running Window in Boot Camp, although it doesn't currently have Windows installed or Boot Camp set up.
I have a Macbook which runs Windows XP in Boot Camp.
I have an external hard drive that I can use to make a bootable clone of my Windows XP boot camp partition.
Can I use a bootable copy of Windows XP on the external hard drive to boot the Mac Mini, which doesn't have a boot camp partition of its own and hasn't had Boot Camp set up yet?

Oh well. I'm familiar with booting Mac OSX from an external drive; I make occasional bootable backups in CCC and make other backups by creating a disk image clone in Disk Utility; since DU can't make an image of the startup drive, I boot from my previous CCC backups to do it. (It also means I can boot Leopard rather than Tiger on my PowerPC box; I've found Tiger is very slow to identify my USB backup drive, while Leopard mounts it instantly.)
It's a pity Windows doesn't boot of an external drive; I can't install Boot Camp on the machine in question because it's not mine and its owner wouldn't let me. If I could boot off an external drive and not touch its startup disk (which Windows wouldn't be able to see anyway due to lack of HFS+ support), I'd be able to use it.

Run Windows from an external drive......

I want to boot Windows from an external drive. Why would Apple not allow this to be done. It makes no sence to me at all. You would still have to run Windows from the intel-Mac. To make you waste good MacOS space on the internal drive is a shame. I know... I can remove Windows and re-gain my "lost" space. However, my kid needs to run some school programs that are in the Windows format only. I hope that someday Apple will let BootCamp run from an external drive also.
Apple //GS

I run OS X from one drive, have my home account on a second drive and improves performance.
VMware image is on non OS X boot drive which I think helps so there isn't I/O contention.
OS X shouldn't really be doing much paging regardless of what you are running if you have enough memory. A lot of system and application paging 'maps' to VM, and you can't disable or want to with either Windows or OS X. The Windows \C: is going to be wherever the VM client is located.
Now, whether VMware or Parallels running as an application is paging and using OS X swap, that just depends on your system memory, and goes to OS X boot drive like any application.
OS X can run off external and you could install some windows programs to use an external drive (FAT or NTFS partition) to free up space also. Or use Parallels and put the VM there.

Boot Camp on an External Drive

Does anyone know why Apple has chosen not to allow installion of Windows on an external drive? I don't think I am going to be willing to risk putting Windows on my internal drive.
Mac Mini (Intel Core Duo) Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Mike -- thanks for your input. I guess Windows is just a worrisome thing for us Mac guys. Part of what always gets me is unknown code that goes into Windows. I did a Google the other day to see if I could get a feel for the "roots" of the upcoming Vista.
Who knows what Vista is really based on -- a modification of NT that was in part based on DOS and VMS? From my limited experience, I am not sure there is enough shelf space to hold the manuals to run VMS successfully. Of course, why worry; Boot Camp and other things will change before Vista gets here.
The bottom line is that I will use all the Windows security fixes.
Mac Mini (Intel Core Duo) Mac OS X (10.4.5)

HT4818 Does anyone know if you can boot off of an external drive?

Im wondering if i can boot windows off an external drive

I'm not certain if it was changed recently or not, but BootCamp did not allow you to boot from an external drive. In fact, in a laptop, BootCamp would only let you boot from the primary internal drive. Since the Windows installer/bootloader wold need to know how to access an external drive, you would need to use a drive connection method that Windows supports natively at boot time, so I don't believe that you can use USB (without building a custom installer). You might be able to use a Thunderbolt drive if you happen to have one of those. Of course, there are those who would also tell you that anything less than a Tunderbolt drive performance would make the Windows OS painfully slow, so that is something to consider...

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?

Install Windows 7 on external drive and boot iMac from it?

Hi everyone,
I want to use Windows 7 on my iMac, I would like to install Windows 7 on an external drive and boot my iMac from this external drive. Is this possible? If yes, any good tutorials?
(I am aware of virtual machines, but am wondering if I can do the above).
Thank you.

Forget trying to use Windows 7 that way.
Add another internal drive to your iMac.
Not knowing which iMac whether you have dual SATA internal like the 2011s.
Those were not "tutorials" but just whatever Google would come up with (a good start but not tutorials or dealing with 7 or hope of success, yes?)
Why? to avoid what you forsee as complications? Not "dirty" or interfere?
Windows tools exist for Windows to import and image and deploy.
You can run Mac OS on any bootable external.

MBP: boot to Windows 7 from external drive?

MBP: booting to Windows 7 from an external drive? Is this poss?
Further, is it possible with a 1TB external drive to partition it to two 500MB volumes, and have one (a) with a bootable clone of the OSX, and the other (b) with 64 bit Windows 7?
I would keep (a) ready in case of a HD failure on my MBP, and use (b) for a couple of PC progs I have that I don't want to go to the trouble of buying the Mac version. They run fine on a PC.
Also would be good for checking cross-platform compatibility of websites.
Would these work with eSata connections (Time Machine doesn't)? or else I'll go FW800.
Cheers!

No, as mentioned 10's of dozens of times, Windows won't.
OS X has always allowed booting from Firewire, and now USB (but that is slow).
Casper 6 will backup Windows to another drive, as will Windows Home Server to external devices.
Many programs can be run through a VM like VirtualBox, Paralells, Fusion.
SuperDuper is just one of the more popular programs to backup (clone) OS X and have it bootable.
Never rely on just one backup set or drive.
If you can go with eSATA (ExpressCard) that is faster but FW800 would be okay and be bootable, eSATA probably not.
Check http://www.macsales.com/firewire for both

Windows 7 on external drive

Hey all,
I want to have a copy of Windows 7 available for rare use. I don't want to have a Bootcamp partition on my hard drive. Is it possible to have Bootcamp on an external drive? I want to use a flash drive. I tried using WinClone and found out that it doesn't support Windows 7 on an external drive.
I have also tried installing Mavericks on a flash drive, booting from that drive and then trying to setup Bootcamp that way. This didn't work since I got a message saying to enable journalling on the disk. The disk was partition with journalling.
I just want to know if what I am trying to do is actually possible so I don't waste anymore time.
Computer specs are late 2013 unibody Macbook Pro running OSX 10.9.5 and Windows 7 64bit Home Premium
Thankyou!

Please see http://bleeptobleep.blogspot.fr/2013/02/mac-install-windows-7-or-8-on-external.h tml for one possible solution.
Windows-to-Go is also another option - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/enterprise/products-and-technologies/devi ces/windowstogo.aspx

Windows borked my external drive's partition map

I have two partitions on my 1 TB external drive, a ~750 GB HFS+ partition full of huge files (games, iTunes, etc.) and a 150 GB NTFS partition for Steam games (derp TF2 derp). The hard drive was originally in GPT, but now is in MBR due to Windows being... unkind.
While trying to create the NTFS partition, Windows 7's Disk Management asked me to convert the partition map to a "simple" partition scheme. I obliviously clicked OK and let it do its thing, then moved my Steam games over to the new NTFS partition and played TF2 for a few weeks. When I finally rebooted into OS X, I wondered why the two partitions weren't appearing on my desktop, and so I opened up Disk Utility, looked at my external HD's description and immediately started spewing out expletives. The disk reported as having one 1 TB "Windows_LDM" partition (Windows says otherwise, with the NTFS partition being recognized and the HFS+ not appearing anywhere) with MBR instead of GPT.
Disk Warrior and Drive Genius both refuse to do anything, since it doesn't report an HFS/HFS+ partition. Disk Management in Windows won't let me change it back to GPT. Be there anything I CAN do?
Here's the DU Command-I output of the HD:
Name : WD
Type : Disk
Partition Map Scheme : Master Boot Record
Disk Identifier : disk1
Media Name : WD My Book Media
Media Type : Generic
Connection Bus : FireWire
Connection ID : 40718345779727391
Device Tree : IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/PCIB@1E/FRWR@3/node@90a91ea80acc1f/sbp-2@c000
Writable : Yes
Ejectable : Yes
Location : External
Total Capacity : 1 TB (1,000,204,886,016 Bytes)
S.M.A.R.T. Status : Not Supported
Disk Number : 1
Partition Number : 0
And of the "partition":
Name : disk1s1
Type : Volume
Disk Identifier : disk1s1
Mount Point : Not mounted
Connection Bus : FireWire
Device Tree : IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/PCIB@1E/FRWR@3/node@90a91ea80acc1f/sbp-2@c000
Writable : Yes
Capacity : 1 TB (1,000,203,836,928 Bytes)
Owners Enabled : No
Can Turn Owners Off : No
Can Be Formatted : No
Bootable : No
Supports Journaling : No
Journaled : No
Disk Number : 1
Partition Number : 1
...Help?

You cannot convert the drive's partition map back to GPT without repartitioning the entire drive. I doubt you can change it even using a Windows or Linux partitioning tool. Even if you could the other partition is probably lost.

Possible to boot Win from an external drive?

I've recently replaced my original drive with both Mac OS X and a small partition for windows installed.
My windows partition is now on an external drive: the only difference is, i'ts now connected via USB instead of the internal SATA connector.
(I can still boot off of my old Mac OS X partition)
Is it possible to Boot from a bootcamp partition on an external drive?
if yes? Can I clone it to other drives?

ok thanks man.
I'm now cloning that old partition to an external drive... guess I have to buy some old crappy pc system to acces some old programs.
I'm not doing the bootcamp partition anymore because someone advised me partitioning startup disks makes them slower. And I maybe use windows once every 6 months to find an old file.

Windows XP, an external drive and my MBP

I know the question of installing Windows XP to an external USB/FireWire drive has been asked a thousand times but I haven't been able to find anything about an instance of XP which is already installed.
My wife's PC died. While we wait on parts to be shipped via newegg, I'd like to be able to continue to use her "machine". I have her HD in a FireWire capable enclosure but I'm unable to boot from it. When I hold the Option button during bootup, it allows me to select the external drive but I'm unable to boot from it. The error message I get is along the lines of: "Unable to find boot disk ..."
Does anybody know if it's possible to use a pre-installed WinXP disk and a MBP?

Not likely. Not only will Windows refuse to install on an external drive it will likely refuse to even startup from one. However, no harm comes from trying. At worst it won't boot. Part of the problem is that the default Windows OS is not configured to boot from an external device. One can modify Windows to boot from a USB drive, but not from Firewire drives. It's just that out of the box it doesn't work.

Will BootCamp install Windows on an external drive?

Instead of partitioning the onboard SSD of my 2011 MacBook Air, I was wondering if I could connect an external drive to put Windows on and boot into Windows from that device. Is that possible?
Thanks!

No, you can run Mac OS from there though and keep the SSD for Windows.
Realize this has been said 100s of times and a quick search with Google/Bing/Yahoo would also answer.

Very slow to boot, even on an external drive

A friend's 15" MacBook Pro, quad core i7,(older, not sure of the exact model) very slow to boot, and boots with the progress bar, then when you try to log in, it goes back to the login page. Often it will not start. Starts after resetting SMC. Reset PRAM. Booted to the recovery disk, ran repair disk on drive, no errors, tried to run repair on the volume and the MBP shut down. Tried booting to an external drive and it boots to an empty desktop with a finder window like an extended desktop.Tried AHT, only the usual battery sensor error, 4SNS/1/40000000 TB3T-128.000. ran extended test, same thing, only the one error.
So, how to back up this MB Pro before I try an erase and install. (short of removing the drive) It would seem to be a hardware error, but always want to try an erase and install. Any ideas or troubleshooting suggestions?

Mike -- thanks for your input. I guess Windows is just a worrisome thing for us Mac guys. Part of what always gets me is unknown code that goes into Windows. I did a Google the other day to see if I could get a feel for the "roots" of the upcoming Vista.
Who knows what Vista is really based on -- a modification of NT that was in part based on DOS and VMS? From my limited experience, I am not sure there is enough shelf space to hold the manuals to run VMS successfully. Of course, why worry; Boot Camp and other things will change before Vista gets here.
The bottom line is that I will use all the Windows security fixes.
Mac Mini (Intel Core Duo) Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Installing Fusion3 and Windows 7 on external drive

Hello and Help!
I'm taking delivery on an iMac 27", 2.8 quad core, 8GB RAM and with 1TB HDD. I currently have Boot Camp on my MBP running Windows XPP. I invested in VMware Fusion3 and now run Boot Camp within OSX and really like it.
With the new iMac coming, someone suggested that I install Fusion3 and Windows, (which will be Windows 7) on a separate external HDD. First, I assume it's possible, but I have no clue as to how. Do I run Boot Camp with the external HDD mounted and path Windows 7 to it? And then do I install Fusion 3 in OSX or the external drive. Installing in OSX is easy since I've already done it, but I don't know about installing it on an external drive.
Any help would be most appreciated.
Ron

Please see http://bleeptobleep.blogspot.fr/2013/02/mac-install-windows-7-or-8-on-external.h tml for one possible solution.
Windows-to-Go is also another option - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/enterprise/products-and-technologies/devi ces/windowstogo.aspx

Boot Windows XP on external drive?

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