ESATA external hard drive woes under Bootcamp

Hi everyone,
I have just taken delivery of a early 2009 MBPro 17 inch and a WD MyBook USB/eSATA/Firewire external HD.
I am trying to use the MyBook with eSATA in bootcamp with a generic expresscard that utilises the Silcon Image Sil3132 chip. I'm only wanting to use it as a single drive with no RAID. The drive shows up and works fine when booting into Leopard but under bootcamp it is nowhere to be seen in explorer. I have installed the ATA controller driver and in control panel it shows up as it's own "app" (and even tells me theres a WD drive attached to it). It also shows up in Device Manager under SCSI/RAID controllers as "Silicon Image SIL 3132 Softraid 5 controller.
In the device info panel this is what i see:
Available controllers: SIL 3132 revision 1
Location: PCI bus 6 device 0
IRQ number: 5 (0x5)
Device location: Channel 1 Target 1
Type: Disk Drive
Model: WD My Book
Firmware revision: 01.00A01
Serial number: blah blah
ATA version: ATA/ATAPI-6
Current transfer mode: Ultra DMA mode 6
Host link speed: Generation 2 (3.0gb/s)
Device link speed: Generation 2 (3.0gb/s)
Look Ahead: Unsupported
Write Cache: enabled
But as for gaining access to the drive in Explorer, it isn't recognised.
Am i missing something here?
I am really stuck with this, so if anyone can help i'd be very grateful.
Cheers
John

Where / how can i find that information?
When i "get info" in Leopard it just says it's formatted as "Windows NT File System"
It came formatted as FAT32 but i reformatted in NTFS. Leopard has read and write access thanks to Paragon.
Windows on the other hand can see it if it's plugged into the USB socket, but not under eSATA.
I was wondering maybe that the express card slot might not be fully supported under Bootcamp, meaning no matter what you plug into it the thing won't ever work properly?
The express card is an unnamed generic one with this chip: SiI3132 - PCI Express (1x) to 2 Port SATA300
Drivers are here..supposedly: http://www.siliconimage.com/support/searchresults.aspx?pid=32&cat=3&os=4

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K9A2 Platinum esata port and Install and Usage of esata External Hard Drive

I just bought a sata hard drive and an icy dock enclosure for backup purposes. Having never used one before can someone explain how this works?
I have the hard drive in the enclosure, no problem there. I plugged it into the esata port on the back of my motherboard, but vista won't recognize it and when I reboot and go into the BIOS, I don't see it there either. I have purchased Acronis True Image 11 Home for backup and mirroring purposes. I wish to mirror my existing internal drive to this new external drive.
Questions:
1. Can I use the esata ports on the motherboard for this drive, or should I use the PCI bracket and plug it into one of the existing sata ports on the motherboard? If esata port, exactly how do they work? Are there BIOS settings for the esata ports or do they operate more like a usb connection?
2. Do I need to do anything with this drive before using it; format, install operating system...??
3. Are the esata external drive considered plug and play or do I need to plug it in before I boot my computer.
TIA.

Everything seems to be working as I would have expected at this point, with the exception of the size of the mirrored drives.
I decided to make another mirror onto the 3rd drive making all 3 drives identical. So now I would expect all three drives to show the same "GB free" while viewing with Vista explorer. The odd thing is, is that which ever drive I make bootable - SATA5 port and becomes the C: drive, shows 226GB free. The other drives, either as E: or J: will show as 268GB free. Most be an Acronis or Acronis user (me) issue/oddity?
But bottom line, the sata and esata ports seem to be working as I would expect. Though plugging the external hard drive in before booting (power on or off, needs to be unplugged from the esata port) seems to hang at the FasTrack screen as described above.
My only guess to why this all seems to be working currently is that I don't think I ever had my bios set correctly. After enabling the onboard controller, having the drive actually plugged into SATA5, then rebooting, selecting boot sequence and selecting the raid drive as the first boot device. At least this is my recollection, I made so many bios changes previously that I thought I had it all covered.
Any thoughts? I think I will try to get an answer on the Acronis size difference before I try to setup my RIAD 1, since that would require erasing two drives, per your instructions here: https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=113738.0
Thanks for help once again.

External Hard Drive woes (possibly Time Machine related)

Hello everyone,
I am using one of the partitions on my WD My Passport for Mac (1 TB) partitioned into two sepaprate partions (both Mac OS Extended Journaled) of 500 GB each as my backup disk for Time Machine.
Now, Time Machine seems to work fine on it for some time. However, after a period of time (~5 hours) time machine stops working. Here are the relevant logs.
2/2/12 5:35:26.221 AM com.apple.backupd: Starting standard backup
2/2/12 5:35:26.424 AM com.apple.backupd: Backing up to: /Volumes/Mridanga/Backups.backupdb
2/2/12 5:35:27.351 AM com.apple.backupd: 2.52 GB required (including padding), 243.30 GB available
2/2/12 5:35:39.920 AM com.apple.backupd: Copied 1408 files (49.3 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
2/2/12 5:35:40.073 AM com.apple.backupd: 2.46 GB required (including padding), 243.25 GB available
2/2/12 5:35:43.099 AM com.apple.backupd: Copied 876 files (199 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
2/2/12 5:35:43.631 AM com.apple.backupd: Starting post-backup thinning
2/2/12 5:35:43.631 AM com.apple.backupd: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
2/2/12 5:35:43.655 AM com.apple.backupd: Backup completed successfully.
2/2/12 6:35:26.125 AM com.apple.backupd: Starting standard backup
2/2/12 6:35:26.379 AM com.apple.backupd: Backing up to: /Volumes/Mridanga/Backups.backupdb
2/2/12 6:37:30.081 AM com.apple.backupd: Error: (-50) Creating directory 2012-02-02-063730.inProgress
2/2/12 6:37:30.081 AM com.apple.backupd: Failed to make snapshot container.
2/2/12 6:37:43.118 AM com.apple.backupd: Error: (22) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.HostUUID path:/Volumes/Mridanga/Backups.backupdb/googly size:37
2/2/12 6:37:53.131 AM com.apple.backupd: Backup failed with error: 2
2/2/12 7:35:25.953 AM com.apple.backupd: Starting standard backup
2/2/12 7:35:26.129 AM com.apple.backupd: Backing up to: /Volumes/Mridanga/Backups.backupdb
2/2/12 7:35:26.190 AM com.apple.backupd: Error: (22) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.HostUUID path:/Volumes/Mridanga/Backups.backupdb/googly size:37
2/2/12 7:35:26.192 AM com.apple.backupd: Error: (22) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.HostUUID path:/Volumes/Mridanga/Backups.backupdb/googly size:37
2/2/12 7:35:36.207 AM com.apple.backupd: Backup failed with error: 2
2/2/12 8:35:25.847 AM com.apple.backupd: Starting standard backup
2/2/12 8:35:26.020 AM com.apple.backupd: Backing up to: /Volumes/Mridanga/Backups.backupdb
2/2/12 8:35:26.076 AM com.apple.backupd: Error: (22) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.HostUUID path:/Volumes/Mridanga/Backups.backupdb/googly size:37
2/2/12 8:35:26.078 AM com.apple.backupd: Error: (22) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.HostUUID path:/Volumes/Mridanga/Backups.backupdb/googly size:37
2/2/12 8:35:36.091 AM com.apple.backupd: Backup failed with error: 2
When this happens, the Hard Drive makes beeping noises (each time Time Machine tries to access it). It refuses to unmount, and Disk Utility refuses to either verify or repair the hard drive. Forcibly unplugging the hard drive and replugging it does not help either. It makes beeping noises for about half a minute and then goes quiet. However, neither is it mounted nor is it visible in the disk utility.
The only way I have managed to fix this is to plug the hard drive in another mac, where it mounts without any problem. I then run disk utility to verify the hard drive (on that mac) and then when I replug the drive to my laptop, it works. Until it breaks again.
The only other "error" related to my external hard drive that I have found in system logs is also pasted below:
2/2/12 12:50:07.161 AM com.apple.backupd: Error (256): fetching properties: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=256 "The file “objects.nib” couldn’t be opened." UserInfo=0x7f9097807460 {NSURL=file://localhost/Volumes/Mridanga/Backups.backupdb/googly/2012-02-01-222347/Macintosh%20HD/System/Library/ColorPickers/NSColorPickerWheel.colorPicker/Resources/ar.lproj/NSColorPickerWheel.nib/objects.nib, NSFilePath=/Volumes/Mridanga/Backups.backupdb/googly/2012-02-01-222347/Macintosh HD/System/Library/ColorPickers/NSColorPickerWheel.colorPicker/Resources/ar.lproj/NSColorPickerWheel.nib/objects.nib, NSUnderlyingError=0x7f9097833650 "The operation couldn’t be completed. Not a directory"}
2/2/12 12:50:07.289 AM com.apple.backupd: Error (256): fetching properties: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=256 "The file “objects.nib” couldn’t be opened." UserInfo=0x7f9097096050 {NSURL=file://localhost/Volumes/Mridanga/Backups.backupdb/googly/2012-02-01-222347/Macintosh%20HD/System/Library/ColorPickers/NSColorPickerWheel.colorPicker/Resources/hu.lproj/NSColorPickerWheel.nib/objects.nib, NSFilePath=/Volumes/Mridanga/Backups.backupdb/googly/2012-02-01-222347/Macintosh HD/System/Library/ColorPickers/NSColorPickerWheel.colorPicker/Resources/hu.lproj/NSColorPickerWheel.nib/objects.nib, NSUnderlyingError=0x7f9097095f40 "The operation couldn’t be completed. Not a directory"}
2/2/12 12:50:07.294 AM com.apple.backupd: Error (256): fetching properties: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=256 "The file “objects.nib” couldn’t be opened." UserInfo=0x7f9097359940 {NSURL=file://localhost/Volumes/Mridanga/Backups.backupdb/googly/2012-02-01-222347/Macintosh%20HD/System/Library/ColorPickers/NSColorPickerWheel.colorPicker/Resources/ko.lproj/NSColorPickerWheel.nib/objects.nib, NSFilePath=/Volumes/Mridanga/Backups.backupdb/googly/2012-02-01-222347/Macintosh HD/System/Library/ColorPickers/NSColorPickerWheel.colorPicker/Resources/ko.lproj/NSColorPickerWheel.nib/objects.nib, NSUnderlyingError=0x7f90973598e0 "The operation couldn’t be completed. Not a directory"}
2/2/12 12:50:07.313 AM com.apple.backupd: Error (256): fetching properties: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=256 "The file “objects.nib” couldn’t be opened." UserInfo=0x7f909772fc90 {NSURL=file://localhost/Volumes/Mridanga/Backups.backupdb/googly/2012-02-01-222347/Macintosh%20HD/System/Library/ColorPickers/NSColorPickerWheel.colorPicker/Resources/sv.lproj/NSColorPickerWheel.nib/objects.nib, NSFilePath=/Volumes/Mridanga/Backups.backupdb/googly/2012-02-01-222347/Macintosh HD/System/Library/ColorPickers/NSColorPickerWheel.colorPicker/Resources/sv.lproj/NSColorPickerWheel.nib/objects.nib, NSUnderlyingError=0x7f909772bcc0 "The operation couldn’t be completed. Not a directory"}
2/2/12 12:50:07.326 AM com.apple.backupd: Error (256): fetching properties: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=256 "The file “objects.nib” couldn’t be opened." UserInfo=0x7f909709b6f0 {NSURL=file://localhost/Volumes/Mridanga/Backups.backupdb/googly/2012-02-01-222347/Macintosh%20HD/System/Library/ColorPickers/NSColorPickerWheel.colorPicker/Resources/zh_CN.lproj/NSColorPickerWheel.nib/objects.nib, NSFilePath=/Volumes/Mridanga/Backups.backupdb/googly/2012-02-01-222347/Macintosh HD/System/Library/ColorPickers/NSColorPickerWheel.colorPicker/Resources/zh_CN.lproj/NSColorPickerWheel.nib/objects.nib, NSUnderlyingError=0x7f9097095e30 "The operation couldn’t be completed. Not a directory"}
I don't know what the problem is, but I would like to be able to use an external. I also have another external plugged in my computer (NTFS, and I have NTFS write enabled via http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/) and that hard drive works perfectly. Also, the problem was there before I enabled NTFS write so nothing was harmed in enabling NTFS write.
System Info
OS X 10.7.3 (problem existed with 10.7.2) as well
RAM: 8 GB
Macbook Pro 15" (i7 2.2 GHz, 2011 model)

OSX is having trouble reading or writing to the drive. That's usually hardware (the drive, port, or cable).
Try different ports, cables, and combinations of the two (a plug that works fine in one port may not make good contact in a different one).
Be sure it's connected directly to your Mac -- no hubs or daisy chains, and not a port on your keyboard.
Also, what Partition Map Scheme does the drive have? (Check via Disk Utility - select the top line for the drive -- it should show at the lower right.)

More external hard drive woes.

Hi all,
I'm using an old Seagate U Series 5 (30GB) that I harvested out of an older computer along with an external hard drive enclosure. It's been initialized and formatted to HFS+ and is at the moment completely empty. However, when I try to transfer large files or large amounts of files (more than around 800MB), it stops at anywhere from 400MB to 1.2GB through and just keeps on displaying the progress bar with whatever estimated time it had left before. Nothing short of unplugging the drive will cancel the operation. This has actually happened with a different hard drive (even older, though) and I've used two different kinds of enclosures. Any ideas?

Shutting down your Mac without properly ejecting your drive (put icion in trash) can fry an external drive. I know, I did it! Maybe you'll have some luck with my tips.
Thought you could use this info about getting FireWire to work!
First, you should always Repair Permissions in Disk Utility before and after any update; I would do that now. If you installed your update with FireWire plugged in, your Mac may not recognize it anymore.
Try resetting your FireWire ports by disconnecting all FW devices, shut down your Mac and unplug it from AC power (wall socket) for 30 minutes. plug it back in and try FW.
If that still didn't get it Zap the PRAM. While restarting Mac hold down the following key combo Command-Option-P-R. Keep holding those keys down till you hear the second start-up chime, then release.
For those of you with Macs that are not PowerBooks or iBooks, a bad internal battery can cause FireWire to not be recognized, so make sure it's good! Also, here is Apple doc.#88338 on getting FireWire to work.
Here's some more FW tips.
 Cheers! DALE

My external hard drive appears in bootcamp but not on my mac partition

This is intriguing. I own a macbook pro and run osx 10.6.8
I recently bought a new 1 tb hard drive and partitioned it. (300G for time machine and another for 700G for random things). It was working fine until I tried logging onto my bootcamp partition. I couldn't edit any files (due to the format of the drive), so I decided to relog back onto my mac parititon. Now the disk is grayed out in disk utility, under a different name and a different format type. I can read the files on my windows partition, but I cannot even access the drive on my mac partition. This drive is rather big, and I have no idea how I would even begin bcking it up... ( i don't have any other drives this large..)
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance!!

You wrote: "It's definitely formatted for windows...I have Disk Warrior, but it doesn't see my drive "DiskWarrior only works on disks in Mac OS formats, e.g. "Mac OS Extended" (aka HFS Plus or HFS+), "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)." It won't fix disks in MS-DOS/FAT32 format.
There are PC-specific disk utilities, akin to DiskWarrior for Mac, so if you have a PC as well, a PC disk utility might help repair the directory corruption if run from a PC.
External drives, whether they're formatted for PCs or Macs, can be subject to the same causes of directory corruption discussed in See my "Data corruption and loss: causes and avoidance" FAQ. Some of those causes have nothing to do with hardware failure and many are preventable.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

FW800 v eSATA & External Hard Drive set-up questions

Hi there: I've loosely got 2 questions to the wise here...
I recently acquired a new MacBook Pro 17" and have extended my collection of external drives. I have:
- 300GB Lacie (connected via FW800) after years of service, now semi-retired used solely as a clone of the system drive
- 1TB Seagate Freeagent (via FW800) currently used as 2/3 Timemachine and 1/3 general non-important storage
- 2TB WD MyBook Studio II (via FW800) to be used as a FCP scratch disc.
I've only had the Seagate for a day and it's behaving ok but seems quite warm to the touch, whilst the WD (arrived today) seems to run much cooler.
I have thought of changing things so that:
- 1TB Seagate becomes the scratch drive
- 2TB WD becomes 3 partitions: 1/ small amount of storage 2/ timemachine backup and 3/ a scratch disc backup
My logic being that (a) the Seagate will be in use less and (b) that I will be able to back-up capture/scratch stuff. There are two possible downsides to this:
- That I will effectively half my capacity for scratch, although at 2TB I might have over-estimated my need in any case.
- I give up my potential for eSata for the scratch disc.
So as well as general advice about my set-up (or proposed set-up) I'm asking whether eSata would be sufficiently faster to justify purchase of an Express/34 card and restricting myself to only using the WD for scratch.
Now give yourself a medal for reading through all this!
Message was edited by: Norliss

Your need for both space and for speed is determined by what codec you're working with, how much of it, and to what complexity. I'd start here to estimate how much space you need:
http://www.videospaceonline.com/
And if you like, you can use my Digital Acquisition Codecs chart to find your codec bitrate:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=0f3cee79d16c357cd5a101cf914073b415dd66068b14f 2a8
eSATA is definitely faster than FW800, but whether you really need that extra boost is something for you to decide. And remember, you can always daisy-chain your backup drive (or connect it via FW400 or even USB-- it's just backup after all), allowing it to backup your scratch files even if they're on another disk.

ThinkPad T510: eSata External Hard Drive Not Working with Windows 7...

Hey folks,
My LaCie Quadra 1TB drive arrived on Monday and the Quadra disconnects 1 minute into any copy / move function using the eSata connection. The USB 2.0 connection works just fine, however, I invested the extra money in a Quadra specifically to take advantage of eSata connection and would like to get this working.
I received the following from LaCie support:
"...the issue with eSATA and large or small drives on Windows 7 is a known issue. However, it is not limited to LaCie drives and we believe this to be a Windows 7 driver issue from Microsoft... using a third party eSATA card with its own drivers does eliminate the issue."
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Hi Bananaman,
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Any further thoughts?

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I can get it to prompt find library by renaming the library it creates, but ... I can't click ok!
The one thing you don't describe having done is moving the "com.apple.iPhoto.plist" file to the trash. Include that step with the above and you should be able to click "OK".

External Hard Drive Woes

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It would be wonderful if some way was invented to do track-file re-association automatically, but I figure it isn't easy..
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I am attempting to connect an external hard drive to my airport extreme and see this hard drive under time machine preferences. I used to able to do this under Leopard, but no longer under lion, even after downloading Airport utility 5.6.

Hi, I am attempting to see my extrenal hard drive, connected to my airport extreme base station, in time machine. I formatted the disk, backed up my mackbook pro to it via usb, and now want to be able to backup over wifi with my disk connected to my airport extreme base station. I spoke with Apple Care, and they told me Apple doens't support this. I used to be able to do this with my older MB pro and under older osx's. I do see the external hard drive connected under disks, just not in time machine preferences. Is there a workaround available that anyone is aware of?
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Can I install Bootcamp on an External Hard Drive?

*Bootcamp on External Hard Drive?*
Can I install Bootcamp on an external Hard Drive? I don't see why it wouldn't work. Do I need to install the Mac OS on the external Hard Drive first, then Bootcamp?
Parallels
Another question. Does Parallels allow you to not have to use the "option" key to boot into Windows? I mean if I use Parallels can I use XP or Vista at the same time as my mac applications?
What, (if any) are the drawbacks to using "Parallels"?
*What Options are there...*
Is it possible for Apple to allow users to program a key on their keyboard, when pressed will bring up Windows so they don't have to always restart? I need to switch between Windows and mac OS quite often and it's a real pain to always restart. What options do I have?
Thanks

Hi Paint Guy,
*Bootcamp on External Hard Drive?*
Can I install Bootcamp on an external Hard Drive? I don't see why it wouldn't work. Do I need to install the Mac OS on the external Hard Drive first, then Bootcamp?
By Microsofts Design no Windows can be installed and booted from external HDs. BootCamp just follows this.
However, according to this http://tubeshards.wordpress.com/2006/12/05/install-windows-to-a-macintosh-usb-dr ive/ it can be done.
Parallels
Another question. Does Parallels allow you to not have to use the "option" key to boot into Windows? I mean if I use Parallels can I use XP or Vista at the same time as my mac applications?
What, (if any) are the drawbacks to using "Parallels"?
Parallels is an OS X application which don't need a restart of your Mac to run Windows.
Therefor you can run OS X and Parallels Windows side-by-side.
Main drawback is, that Windows runs not native (on the real hardware) but in a virtualized environment.
While this is more than acceptable for 'standard' Office programs, any program that needs direct hardware access (especially games and 3D-programs) either do not run at all or run at noticeable slower speed.
Also you have to realize that the amount of RAM in your Mac is divided between OS X and Parallels Windows.
*What Options are there...*
Is it possible for Apple to allow users to program a key on their keyboard, when pressed will bring up Windows so they don't have to always restart? I need to switch between Windows and mac OS quite often and it's a real pain to always restart. What options do I have?
BootCamp is no option then, since it needs a reboot everytime you want to switch between OS X and Windows.
Parallels (and VMWare Fusion and VirtualBox, BTW) run alongside OSX.
Thanks
You're welcome. Hope it helps.
Have Fun
Stefan
Message was edited by: Fortuny

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?

Can i install wow on an external hard drive?

Can i install wow on an external hard drive and play it off that, cause im runing out of space on my computer.

If you are going to install WoW to a external hard drive I suggest getting a eSATA external hard drive. There is a noticable drop in performance when trying to use a external USB drive to run games from.

How do i confirm data is "backed up" on external Hard Drive?

I'm a PC user so i hope i'm doing this right....Christmas present for my wife's MacBook Pro, I purchased a Seagate 1Tb external hard drive. Pretty simple. Connected it, and Time Machine takes over and backs up automatically via the USB connection.
Except that when i click on time machine, i'm not really convinced that the external HD has everything backed up that it should. Specifically, when i open Time Machine, i am unable to view photos on iPhoto. This is my wife's greatest concern. Please help, and thank you.

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?

Can I read mail on an external hard drive without importing the account?

HI - I have a large mail account on an external hard drive which i do not want to import on my mac due to hard drive space limitations. Can I review the mail within the Mail app, (or some other app) without importing everything into mail or onto my hard drive? Thanks very much!!

Hi Paint Guy,
*Bootcamp on External Hard Drive?*
Can I install Bootcamp on an external Hard Drive? I don't see why it wouldn't work. Do I need to install the Mac OS on the external Hard Drive first, then Bootcamp?
By Microsofts Design no Windows can be installed and booted from external HDs. BootCamp just follows this.
However, according to this http://tubeshards.wordpress.com/2006/12/05/install-windows-to-a-macintosh-usb-dr ive/ it can be done.
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What, (if any) are the drawbacks to using "Parallels"?
Parallels is an OS X application which don't need a restart of your Mac to run Windows.
Therefor you can run OS X and Parallels Windows side-by-side.
Main drawback is, that Windows runs not native (on the real hardware) but in a virtualized environment.
While this is more than acceptable for 'standard' Office programs, any program that needs direct hardware access (especially games and 3D-programs) either do not run at all or run at noticeable slower speed.
Also you have to realize that the amount of RAM in your Mac is divided between OS X and Parallels Windows.
*What Options are there...*
Is it possible for Apple to allow users to program a key on their keyboard, when pressed will bring up Windows so they don't have to always restart? I need to switch between Windows and mac OS quite often and it's a real pain to always restart. What options do I have?
BootCamp is no option then, since it needs a reboot everytime you want to switch between OS X and Windows.
Parallels (and VMWare Fusion and VirtualBox, BTW) run alongside OSX.
Thanks
You're welcome. Hope it helps.
Have Fun
Stefan
Message was edited by: Fortuny

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