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.

Similar Messages

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • When I check my boot SSD drive using Disk Utility under Mavericks, I often get "Incorrect number of extended attributes" errors.  But if I boot off an external drive and check the same SSD, no errors are reported.  Is this a bug in Mavericks?

    When I check my boot SSD drive using Disk Utility under Mavericks, I often get "Incorrect number of extended attributes" errors.  But if I boot off an external drive and check the same SSD, no errors are reported. 
    This happens not just with the SSD in my Mac Mini, but with another SSD in my MacBook (both now running Mavericks).  So far as I know, all of the kit I am using is in good order (despite the file corruption reports).  So I am beginning to wonder if it could be due to a bug in Mavericks?  Both SSD drives have been formatted to MacOS Extended (journaled) format.  Should I have used a different format, I wonder?
    Has anyone else encountered this issue?
    Does anyone have a solution?
    Or an explanation that might help my investigation of the issue?
    Thanks guys,

    I understand that the Corsair Force 3 is not one of the SSD drives that are supported on Apple Macs. 
    I did try downloading and using Trim Enabler, but the error message came up both when it was off and when it was on.
    I understand that not everyone thinks Trim Enabler is a good program, though there is a new version out now, so I may give it another try.

  • How Do I Run Windows from an External Drive?

    Recently my PC with Windows XP crashed- it's old and the motherboard went. I had a full version of Windows XP on there, and I would like to know what I need to do in order to run Windows off of that hard drive (I've taken it out and have it in an enclosure). Ideally, I would like to be able to plug in this external drive, and start a program that will allow me to run Windows off of this drive.
    I have downloaded a trial of Parallels Desktop, which seems like it will work, but it needs me to install a transporter on the Windows drive before it can migrate the drive. The problem is, I can't access my drive anymore since my PC is no longer broken.

    Then I guess my question is how do I go about transferring my PC data to the external drive without a PC*.
    In Parallels, I try this:
    Migrate Windows from a PC > External Storage Device > then it says "please install Parallels Transporter Agent on your PC
    Since my PC no longer works, I need to find a way to transport the data. As of now, I plug in my Windows drive to my Mac, and it doesn't even show up. I would be OK with running Windows on my Mac via a VM, although it looks like I would need to buy Windows again since it's an OEM copy...
    *I found a site where it says it can be done, but I am just having trouble with the transporter program.
    https://www.knowhowcompany.com/en/question/14996/Is-it-posible-to-run-windows-Pa rallels-on-Mac-from-an-external-hard-drive.

  • 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)  

  • Will Upgrading Mac OS X delete the windows off the hard drive?

    Will Upgrading Mac OS X delete the windows off the hard drive?

    Will Upgrading Mac OS X delete the windows off the hard drive?
    If you're using multiple partitions, no. If you're using an image with Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion, only if an Erase & Install is done.
    (40716)

  • Booting V245 off USB DVD drive

    How do I boot V245 off USB DVD drive?

    Apparently cannot be done on Sparc, only on x86.

  • 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 upgraded to Mavericks won't boot off of external drive

    Now that I have upgraded my MBP to Mavericks I can not longer boot off of extrenal drives like I has in the past. I hold down the option key at boot up and it display the external drive as a bootable option but once clicked....it just hangs.
    Has anyone else experienced this?
    Thanks,
    D

    Well, want to rule out drive case,, as those do come up with EVERY new OS, just hit Lion 10.7 forum when it came out, or when 10.6.0 came out 3 yrs ago.
    Maybe the power adapter is the weak link.
    As I said, and goes back yrs, not a fan of FW/USB/eSATA case from major vendors (LaCie, WD, Seagate etc).
    And you could try another case. Be sure to buy a case that lets you swap in your own hard drives though.
    http://www.macsales.com/firewire - look for bare drive case "0" capacity hard drive

  • Trouble booting off DVD/external drive. wierd boot screen

    My new iBook G4 has been working fine by itself.
    I have an older external firewire drive and when I try to use that as the startup drive, it seems to boot up fine but the cursor remains frozen in the top left corner. The keyboard seems to work fine. (I haven't been able to get keyboard commands to drive the menus. That's another problem I guess).
    I can run the original install disk and I can run the hardware diagnostics on it. All is fine.
    Then I tried to reinstall Tiger on the external hard drive using the install DVD that came with our family pack.
    When I run the installer on my new iBook G4 and the computer restarts, the screen that comes up after the gray Apple logo and spinning gear is a blue border and white rectangle with graphics showing what look like a two-step process, numbered 1 and 2 at the bottom. The graphic depicts an oval shape with what looks like a cover removed and two AA-type battery icons linked to the graphic. The picture is much the same for each step with differences the communnicate the idea of inserting or replacing. The second step has a small blinking red circle, like a screw head.
    I have no control over the arrow cursor in the top-left of my screen. No action I can perform onscreen from the keyboard.
    What is this screen?
    I tried resetting PRAM, went into Open Firmware to reset NVRAM and all.
    No devices are attached and it still does this. I don't use a wireless mouse, which is sort of what the oval shape reminds me of. Given the frozen cursor in both cases, it makes me think there's something going on with the information it's getting about what pointing device is being used.
    The DVD runs fine on other computers and is right now completing the installation I was trying to do, using a Powerbook G4.

    Thanks. Makes sense. I'll try that. I had checked the drive firmware with the most recent LaCie updater. So I didn't think it was the drive.
    I did manage to use the keyboard shortcuts to open the Keyboard Preference Pane while booted off of the external drive. I enjoyed learning how useful it is to type the beginning of search terms (like "trac") into the Search box and use the menu of matches returned to navigate by Mouse to the Trackpad pane, only to be told that the Trackpad Tab wasn't loaded because my iBook doesn't have one (wrong). It had loaded only the Mouse tab.
    Learning a few new tidbits today. Thank you very much.

  • 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 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.

Maybe you are looking for