External HDD to boot from? Recommendations?

So I just got my amazing MacBook Pro for college and have a 320GB HD going at 5400rpm (sadly). I want to put XP on my computer so I can mainly just play games after "bootcamping." Thing is, I don't want to partion my drive because I don't want to take away space from what I will be using for Mac files. If I understand correctly, I could run Windows off an external harddrive correct? So that is where it brings me.
I only need about 60-80GB storage since I will only be using it for games but I can do more if I have too. Secondly, *If I am playing pretty graphically intense games, will I need/want a 7200rpm HD?* or will 5400rpm do the trick? Lastly will *USB 2.0 be ok or should I get something that supports firewire 400 and/or 800?*
I'm rockin a 2.8Ghz w/ 4gb RAM and the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M + 9600M GT so I want to embrace the power!
Thanks!!

Sorry, no. Windows will neither install on nor boot from an external drive.
If you choose to use virtualization software such as VM Fusion or Parallels, then both of them will enable booting windows from an external drive containing the VM software's virtual drive. This is because starting Windows is under the control of the VM software. However, virtualization is not as satisfactory for heavy duty gaming compared with booting into Windows directly.

Similar Messages

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#/

External HDD keeps changing from HFS to NTFS

Greetings,
This is my first post and I am also brand new to apple. I have an issue that I am wondering if anybody has experienced it.
I currently migrated from an old PC (XP SP3) to OSX. I have files on an external HDD that was used on the PC that I now want to use on the mac. (Formatted NTFS)
Now I know that NTFS is not writable in OSX but here is where my issue lies.
I currently have a MB463LL/A model with 2.26 and 4GB. I am currently using a 250GB ext HDD for backup purposes for a photography business (not using Time Machine yet). I recently transferred the files to another external HDD, 1TB, (as to not lose the photos) and used disk utility to erase the 250GB disk and formatted it using the HFS Extended format. (might not be the correct one so correct me if I am using the wrong format please.)
After transferring the files back to the HDD, the HFS reverted back to NTFS, and I am unable to write to the drive again.
Any suggestions as to what is happening?

After transferring the files back to the HDD, the HFS reverted back to NTFS, and I am unable to write to the drive again.
Are you 100% positive it is NTFS again (I am seriously doubting it could do that))? Does it say so in Disk Utility, or are you just interpreting it is because you have write problems?

[Solved]Can't mount external hdd at boot!

Hi!
I'm trying to mount my new external hdd (Lacie USB2) at boot, but without success.
To avoid random device name (sdx, sdy), I would like to use UUID in my fstab file.
I've read this wiki.
I think my configuration is ok, but there's an error at boot saying "Device with UUID xxxxxxxx doesn't exist, can't mount it", or something like that.
Here are some commands:
[eko@nodrom ~]$ fdisk -l
Disque /dev/sdb: 500.1 Go, 500107862016 octets
255 têtes, 63 secteurs/piste, 60801 cylindres
Unités = cylindres de 16065 * 512 = 8225280 octets
Périphérique Amorce Début Fin Blocs Id Système
/dev/sdb1 * 1 60801 488384001 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
[eko@nodrom ~]$ /bin/ls -lF /dev/disk/by-uuid/
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 jui 26 13:06 1da8b247-2a03-4a00-817c-d4da8df63488 -> ../../sda2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 jui 26 13:06 485e9b10-fce5-4cbd-b23a-81f232d23bc5 -> ../../sda1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 jui 26 13:06 6853-5BA9 -> ../../sdb1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 jui 26 13:06 8aa3ce4c-5e2a-48c8-b3c3-38d02b4c0e68 -> ../../sda3
And my fstab file:
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
none /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0
/dev/dvd /mnt/dvd udf ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0
/dev/sda1 / ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/sda2 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/sda3 home ext3 defaults 0 1
#Disque dur externe
UUID=6853-5BA9 /media/hdd vfat rw,user,auto,exec,gid=100,uid=1000,umask=002,iocharset=utf8,codepage=850,shortname=mixed 0 0
Could someone help me?
Thanks in advance!
Last edited by vomix (2007-08-09 17:56:28)

Hi,
Thanks for your reply.
But even with /dev/disk/by-uuid/6853-5BA9 in my fstab file, it fails to automount it.
It says "Special device with UUID=6853-5BA9 does not exist".
The weird thing is that I can mount it manually without problems.
(In fact, that's not true, I've the same problem than steven. May it be a kernel-related problem?)
Or maybe there's a fault in the rest of my fstab line? (iocharset, guid, etc?)
In the case of a kernel related bug, how could I downgrade it?
I've tried with "pacman -U kernel26-2.6.21.6-1.pkg.tar.gz" in /var/cache/pacman/pkg but it broke my xorg server at reboot.

Prohibited sign at bootup after cloning internal hdd to external hdd and booting up from it

Good evening.
My specifications/environment: I have a Macbook Pro 17" 2009 model running Snow Leopard 10.6.8. The internal hdd had 2 partitions, one for Mac and one for Bootcamp.
Objective: I am trying to upgrade the internal 500GB to a Seagate 1TB external Harddrive and making it the primary internal. Then I want to upgrade to Mountain Lion.
Steps taken: Used a 2TB external to make a Time Machine backup of the current internal harddrive. I put it aside. I made a clone of the internal harddrive (only the mac partition) to another 1TB external, using Disk Rescue 3. I took external Seagate out of its external case and replaced the 500GB internal. I booted up with the new 1TB drive and got a prohibited sign with the spinning circle. I booted up again holding in the ALT key to select the boot drive.
I did notice though that the 1TB Seagate drive used, is a little bit fatter than the previous 500GB internal. I did manage to fit the drive in still, as it had the SATA connector and it did sort of fit in.
Since I couldnt get the drive loaded up, I put the original back in, started up and did a verify and repair on the new drive. It did say that there was a minor header error and it fixed it. Put the new 1TB back in as the internal, but still getting the prohibited sign at startup.
I booted up again without holding ALT and got the folder with the question mark flashing. I shut down again and used ALT and selected the Hard drive for start up and got the prohibited sign again.
i must mention that I also had difficulties deleting the Bootcamp partition and reclaiming the storage to the Mac HDD.
I have more details on the issue as I've tried so many different things.
Please guide me into what steps I should take to make this work.
Thank you in advance

After the two previous partition/format attempts (the first of which included Zero Data erase [around 5 hrs on the 500GB drive as recommended per Kappy's Extended Hard Drive Preparation]) I returned the drive to the retailer for an exchange with an identical WD Scorpio Blue 500GB (I wasn't sure that there was an issue with the drive but didn't want to take any chances on my brand new hard drive upgrade....).
I prepared the new replacement drive attached via USB 2.0 Bytec DriveMate (which has a separate power supply) using Disk Utility (running DU off the internal hard drive [Leopard ver 11.1}), partitioned as 1 partition, GUID, Mac OS Extended (Journaled); erased (but did not zero data); unchecked the "ignore ownership" check box of the external destination drive via Get Info after selecting the drive on the Desktop; and cloned the internal HD to the external drive using the Restore tab of DU, selecting "erase destination" check box.
The clone using Disk Utility Restore tab completed successfully in around 4 hours (83GB of data cloned to the 500GB drive...seems long...perhaps selecting "erase destination" under the Restore tab caused it to take longer?). I unchecked the "ignore ownership" box for the destination drive again after cloning. Rebooted to the external drive and ran a few apps....everything OK.
Not sure what the difference was in the successful clone - whether there was a problem with the original drive or whether "zeroing the data" during the first erase and partition may have created issues - but it worked fine with the new drive.

Can I use applications installed on HDD after booting from new SSD?

Hi! I am a little uninformed and require some MacKnowledge.
Relevant hard/software:
MacBook Pro 17" early '11. Lots of RAM. Slow but large HDD (5400rpm, 750Gb, I think.)
OS 10.7.4
128 Wintec Expresscard SSD.
I recently aquired a 128Gb ExpressCard34 SSD and installed 10.7.4 on it just to see how it "felt."
Wow*.
Now I want to boot on that drive exclusively, but have no idea the best way to migrate over my applications.
I could reinstall all applications fresh (as a 20yr PC vet, this is my natural inclination,) but I have a gut sense this is not needed.
I havent tried it yet, but I am willing to bet that most programs for mac will just start if you click on them. Again, need some knowledge and I dont know whwere to get it.
I really want to run migration assistant so I can just port over all my odd settings; however, I have no idea what control I will have over the actual import.
I actually dont want to physically move any programs just yet. In fact, I want to use most of my non-Apple, personally-installel applications from the HDD. The only program that might be VERY useful to migrate to the SSD would be parallels and the windows VM I keep for VPN and PC-only programs as it is very slow. MAYBE MSoffice as those programs are slow to start up. Also, maybe aperature if it needs to be installed on the ssd to have it's swapfile on that drive. On second thought, that is fine where it is.
I am willing to just get in there and try it out, but I dont want to screw up my HDD install. I would like the separate OS instances to play nice with each other and I am not sure that will happen if i start calling applications from either one (though, obviously, not at the same time.)
So where could I discover what my bounderies are with this situation? Any "best practices?"
*I do want to keep the discussion off the topic of use of expresscard ssd for boot drives, but I felt I should comment further. They have thier pros and cons. I would not be surprised if my new drive fails (also not surprised if it lasts 10xexpected RW cycles.) Nevertheless, the speed is just absolutely amazing. Night and day difference on the "feel" of boot and program load. You can look up the benchmarks if you are inclined.

Thank you for the fast response.
Regarding use of the applications, is it your opinion that simply opening most applications by double-clicking should be sufficient to use them with their current settings. i.e., internal references to ~library/application support/relevant program.plist?
If so, is this universally true, i.e., any and all programs will work?
Regarding migrating settings, are you saying that I can import all my settings WITHOUT importing the programs?
Sorry for my being dense, and supplying a wall of text in the OP.

External HDD wont boot up - 320GB 3.5" Alu-Case

I've been using this drive absolutely trouble-free for about 18 months and suddeny it won't boot up. Yesterday it was fine, this morning nothing.
Instead of the light changing from red to solid blue, it's flashing alternate blue and red. I simply can't find any support info on this problem at all. The user manual has a small troubleshooting section, but doesnt cover "My drive won't work".
The real pain is that its got all my photos from the last two years - I figured it would be safer on here than my decrepit desktops HDD - and, even more painful, my entire i-tunes library, which is simply too big for my fixed HDD.
Does anyone have any knowledge/insight/suggestions?

By way of an update, should anyone else have a similar situation. I left the drive powered up and went away to do something, totally forgetting about it. When I came back to the comp some time later, it had booted up and was working normally.
That was yesterday. As I'm typing this, I just tried to boot it up and its doing the flashdance again. Looks like there's a problem building. I'm busy transferring data on it to other sources when it's operating.
I'd still like to know what's causing this and if it's something I can do something about, if anyone has any ideas.

Can I use an external HDD for Boot Camp?

I've got the new MacBook. So, I'm gonna be short on space if I allocate space from the in built Hard Disk or ssd whatever you want to call it..
Is it in any way possible to set up the windows account with an external hard drive(with USB 3)? Or can I use time capsule(or whatever their external hard disk is called) as an external drive for windows?
Since I'll mostly be playing games in windows, I'll need decent space there too...

FaceLord wrote:
I'm not sure you're numbers are quite right. I have Windows 7 Home Premium 32bit installed right now with Service Pack 1 on my bootcamp partition. I've also got Steam and Deus Ex: Human Revolution installed. Steam and the game occupy 8.47GB of space. Total space occupied on the disk is 21.2 GB, which means Windows is taking 12.73 GB. So I'd say the system requirements of 16GB for 32bit and 20GB for 64bit definitely include cache and paging, and also account for service packs and drivers.
You could easily get by with 20GB minimum space for bootcamp.
Take a moment and read the posts on this site, users who installed Windows in a 30G or less partition come here regularly trying to find the easy way to make it larger. We'll help you when you need the space.
Windows 7 should not be installed in less than a 40G partition, larger if the drive is an SSD.

Format HDD and boot from usb?

My Macbook Air (2011) is very slow and I keep getting a warning message that the start up disk is full.
I would like to reformat the HDD and load Mountain Lion direct from a USB stick. Is this possible and what is the procedure.
Thanks
Rudy

Check out this article. If you don't already have a copy of the Mt Lion installer you'll need to download one. In order to download it you'll need to have enough free drive space, about 8GB. I've seen this turn into a chicken/egg situation :-(

External HDD permissions differs from Mac and Win

I just bought an external Hard Drive LaCie which asked at the first setup if I was going to use it for Mac, Windows or both.
Of course, I picked both as I will be moving around with it.
I can read, write on Mac. However, I only can read on Bootcamp.
I was not able to change the permissions on the Windows side (right button on the HDD does not display me any permissions options like mentionned in my research).
In my permissions on Mac, everything in Read & Write.
PLEASE HELP, it has been driving me crazy
Cheers,
PacoSG

Easy fix, this will erase everything on it no other way
Connect to OSX, open disk utility, select external drive on left hand side
Click partition tab, select 1 under options - this is KEY - change to MBR
Format will be exfat
Run it

Optical drive trashed and MB Pro will not boot from USB image

Hello,
New here but I have searched and tried all I know to get this MBP working right again. My disk drive is trashed and has been for some time now, this is why I have a bootable version of Snow Leopard on an 8G flash drive. When my MBP began acting funny recently and I went to disk utility to verify permissions and the disk. Both failed = must boot from disk to repair, thus my issue. For some reason by MBP will not boot from the usb image I have used previously??? Pressing C or Option during startup does not work. If I press Option, I only get the harddrive option, C yields nothing and the computer boots normally.
Please!! let me know how / what you would do to resolve this. I don't understand why I have previously been able to boot from this same file on the same drive previously to repair my disk / permissions but cannot do so now. FWIW, I tried placing the file (OSX) on my external HDD to boot from, this did not work either (USB HDD).
Thank you in advance for your input!!

It isn't clear what you mean about your HD being trashed or which disk (HD or USB drive) you are trying to repair, but either way you need to start up from your Snow Leopard installer DVD & instead of installing anything go to the Utilities menu & run Disk Utility from there to repair either or both of the disks.

Booting up in Windows from an external HDD...

Hey-there... new to Mac and looking for a hand if you can.
Am going to be using my Mac to support users in a Windows environment soon and wondering how I'd go about keeping all my work related stuff - WindowsXP, Applications and specific related data - on an external HDD then boot off of it (via FireWIRE) when I require a 'Windows machine'. Do I boot off an external drive via the 'Startup Disk' or 'Option Button' to affect this?
Is this even my best solution with respect to Mac?
Also, my display has just started to dim and become bright again as I'm typing just now (not happened before) - what's up with that? (Have I perhaps managed to tip some kind of 'hot-key' without knowing it?)
Surrender your thoughts...
Thanks heaps!

Whoa... been looking about the place since my original post - I see that this whole subject is somewhat of a moot point. (Whoops!)
For anyone in the situation that I was in earlier (wanting to find out more info), might I suggest starting out at:
http://www.dualbootguru.com/bc%20-%20booting%20external%20hdd.shtml
Enjoy...

Problem booting from external DVD drive on Lenovo S10e

Hi,
I recently purchased a new Lenovo S10e ideapad, a few weeks prior to that I purchased an external DVD rewriter drive manufactured by LG, the drive works perfectly on every computer I try with the exception of the Lenovo ideapad S10e.
The thing is that the drive is being recognized and installed by the Windows XP Home Edition the S10e came with but when I try to boot a bootable CD using then drive on the S10e ideapad I almost alwasy fail to do so.
I set the S10e BIOS to have the USB CDROM as first boot device, in addition I used the F12 key to use the boot menu to choose the boot device, in 9 out 0f 10 atempts my external drive will not show in the boot menu and when choosing the enter setup option I see that the BIOS do not list it as the USB CDROM, instead it says "USB CDROM:" rather than have the drive name after it.
In the 1 time out of 10 it does work the BIOS seem to be identifying the drive and it shows in the boot menu, however I cannot work with it for a more than 1 minute without it stopped being recognized again.
The problem seems very strange to me as the drive works under the windows operating system and do not have any problem whatsoever on other computers, I have tested the external drive on my PC, another Mini Laptop from LG and a GIGABYTE Laptop (Normal one), all of which had no problems recognizing the external drive and booting from it.
I will really appreciate if I can get some help with the problem.
Thanks.

I've had a similar issue with X61 and the external DVD drive from Lenovo.
In my case, it was the power issue. On the back of the drive, there is a small table says that the drive needs a 3.0A 5V power input. One USB 2.0 port can only provide 0.5A. I don't know if the drive has any special, low power mode, but I suspect that even if it has, 0.5A is still not enough to fully power it. I've checked the current with the multimeter, and at peak times, the drive draws 550mA. Even then, it makes a stuttering sound for a few seconds, before finally spinning the DVD disk. I've also noticed that the DVD works most of the times when it's connected to the left USB port. That may be because of how the laptop's internal power circuicity is laid out (+separate USB host controller for each 'side' of the laptop). Another thing that seems to help is to disable all 5V driven devices that the laptop uses: the wifi card, bluetooth, any additional devices connected to the USB bus / to the ethernet port / SD card port (I'm not actually sure which of the devices are 5V and which are 3.3V, but the best option is to disable all of them), maybe even remove the battery (if it's charging). Finally, the DVD drive works better if the laptop was turned on and runnig for some time, rather than it being turned on "a minute before". Also, in the BIOS, there is a setting that changes the speed of the DVD drive, but switching it to "low" didn't seem to affect the external drive (at least not before Windows boots up).

Do you boot from an external startup disk? Which one?

My IOmega USb 80gb will not be recognized as a volume that can accept the OS X install from the disk (10.4.3). I need the room for the jampacks and Reason 3.0 apps and I only have 10gb left on the internal harddrive. Does it need to a fire wire port with the appropriate partition and format to get the install software on the disk to be able to be the start up disk. If I get the "This volume can not run OS X " again on another drive I will be ******. Please let me know what external drive you boot from on your iBook

John,
No, I don't think it can. I believe you need to use Mac OS Extended Journaled (HFS+) unless you specifically need to use UFS (Unix File System). Knowledge Base Document #301270 says:
Volume format choices
Once you've selected this option, you can choose from two types of volume formats:
Mac OS Extended (Journaled)—This is the default option and should be used unless you have a specific reason not to.
UNIX File System—Only choose this option if you specifically need it.
I believe it is the same reason you need HSF+ in order to use CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner).
Jon

How do I boot from an external drive?

I've just Carbon Cloned my 60GB drive to a firewire external drive. I'm about to replace the 60GB with a 160GB drive and the CCC instructions say boot from the external drive I'd just created once the new disk is installed. Then CCC the cloned drive back to the new hard drive.
So, how do I boot from an external drive? Do I have load anything to the new drive? Will the macbook detect the external drive and boot from that? Or what??????
Thanks
Dick

Thanks DWB. Being the rash impetuous guy I am I didn't wait for replies and just switched on the macbook after installing the new disk (which was so easy it was unbelievable - had to go and buy a a little torx bit though) to see what would happen.
Blow me down with a feather if it didn't just boot off the external drive all by itself :-O It did come up with the disk was unverified and I could see it in FINDER and I was prseented with a screen to ERASE/RESTORE etc.
When I went to CCC the external drive back to the new hard drive it didn't give show me the new hard drive so I guessed I'd have to do something to format (?) the hard drive.
I don't know if I did the right thing but I went to disk utilities and chose ERASE in the vague hope it would maybe format the disk in some way.
Seems to work now and the CCC replaced the system perfectly as far as I can see.
Basically very impressive all round. Piece of proverbial to replace the disk and CCC made life so easy.
Thanks again.
Cheers
Dick

External HDD to boot from? Recommendations?

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