How to run Boot Camp on External Hard Drive?

I use my mid-2012 11" MacBook Air for gaming and school work. My hard drive is filling up fast, and I was hoping I could use an external hard drive and Boot Camp to run Windows for my games, thus freeing up most of my hard drive.
My questions are:
1) Is this possible?
2) What equipment would I need to do it?
3) What would I be looking for in an external hard drive for this purpose?
4) If I did this, would I be able to unplug and replug my external hard drive without causing a problem?
5) What version of Windows should I use?
The program I will be using for my games is Steam.

For the MacBook Pro Retina and Windows 8.1 the setup procedure was the following:
Step -1: Make sure your Thunderbot drive works, stable and reliable.
Step 0. Make sure you have a complete Time Machine backup of you Mac OS hard drive. Seriously. Very easy to mess things up completely.
Step 1. Get a Windows 8.1 64 bit iso. You might want to try it out first before committing money to it. For that you can download an official 90 day Windows 8.1 Enterprise evaluation from Microsoft. It's somewhat hidden from mainstream experience, but search engines help you there.
It is important to use 64 bit, as 32 bit will not work.
Step 2. Get a USB flash drive. 8 GB USB flash drive worked fine for me.
Step 3. On Window box or from virtualized Windows machine make a bootable setup USB. I have used Rufus for that. Make sure you have selected "GTP partition scheme for UEFI computer" and FAT32.
I've tried MBR partition scheme, but it hasn't worked for me.
Step 4. Once bootable setup USB is created, shutdown everything. Plugin your external thunderbolt drive and bootable setup USB flash drive. Hold ALT (Option key) to choose from what thing to boot.
Step 5. If you are lucky you will see yellow "EFI Boot". Yellow usually meens 'external'. That meens you are going to boot into setup from USB flash drive. Go for it.
Step 6. In 5-10 minutes you should get into Window setup. Whenever you are asked, always choose "Custom" or so, till you get to the hard drive selection screen. You should see list of many partitions coming from 2 drives - one internal and one external.
WARNING: Be super careful here!!!!!
Step 7. Convince Windows to install itself on the drive that is external. You might have to delete all of the partitions of the external drive and leave it completely unpartitioned. This will make Windows autoconvert it's partition scheme to GTP.
WARNING: Think twice before deleting any partitions; do not delete any partitions on your internal drive.
Step 8. Let Windows install itself. I recommend turning off windows autoupdate for now, especially drivers part of it, since Windows 8.1 autoudate seams to be pushing buggy drivers at the moment.
Step 9. If you are SUPER lucky after reboot (and holding ALT/Option) you should see gray "EFI boot" that will boot Windows from external drive.
Step 10. Download and install Apple latest bootcamp drivers, things should work normally once those drivers are installed.
Step 11. Enjoy!

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Same way as before, hold down shift as you start iTunes, Choose or Create a library.
tt2

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Hi,
I recently bought a new MacBook Pro Retina (running OS 10.9.2 Mavericks), because I had to give back my „old“ one (bought in February 2013, running OS 10.8 Mountain Lion), which was only a loan from University.
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Hi!
Thanks for your prompt response. The reason I don't want to migrate all apps is that I had installed a lot of scientific applications on the Mt-Lion MacBook that I will definitely not use in the future, some that I might use only very rarely, and I can migrate only the complete applications folder (and I have only a 256 GB hard drive). Of course I could deinstall the unused apps manually after the migration, but I am not 100% sure, if this procedure completely removes all the stuff from the libraries and preferences, etc. Moreover I also started playing with some time ago with server applications like apache server etc. and since I am a complete newbie in this field, I have to admit, I really don't know how to uninstall these things properly. So I figured a clean install for the new MacBook would be the best. Well, maybe I will migrate everything and remove the unnecessary stuff afterwards manually. I am just a bit disappointed, because I didn't anticipate these problems with the images...
Just one further question: Is it correct, that if I find a way to update my images from Mt-Lion to Mavericks (if that is possible at all?), this would make them bootable again?
Thanks!

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BCA is a one trick pony.
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Put a tiny OS X and use BCA and devote most of the hard drive and leave minimum for OS X
or
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Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
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easybpw wrote:
can I just replace it with an external drive and load the OS on that and boot from there?
Yes, but it's not recommended for long-term use.
If so what exactly, step by step, would I need to do?
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How to replace or upgrade a drive in a laptop
Step One: Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger, Leopard or Snow Leopard.) After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
Step Two: Remove the old drive and install the new drive. Place the old drive in an external USB enclosure. You can buy one at OWC who is also a good vendor for drives.
Step Three: Boot from the external drive. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager appears. Select the icon for the external drive then click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Step Four: New Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your new hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Step Five: Clone the old drive to the new drive
1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
4. Check the box labeled Erase destination.
5. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the new internal drive. Source means the old external drive.
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Running Disk Utility off External Hard drive

To run "repair disk" in disk utility on my internal hard drive I'm supposed to insert my Install DVD, restart my mac and run disk utility - however running this program off the disk is much slower than running it off my 800firewire external hard drive. I've tried a few different ways of going about this:
1) Partitioning my hard drive in two (both HFS+) with more than enough room for the DVD, I've tried both making a Disk Image of the Install DVD and dragging it into the source field in the "restore" tab and dragged my Install partition into the destination field, after that was complete, I restarted my computer while holding the "alt" key I wasn't even offered the option to boot to my external hard drive
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1. You can update the installed version of the OS on the external to take advantage of any improvements, including to Disk Utility, that may be released in the future.
2. The version of Snow Leopard that runs from the DVD is a special one that among other things is optimized for read-only media. For instance, it doesn't write log files to the startup disk since it doesn't expect that to be possible.
3. You can include other utilities on the external & easily customize it to your liking. For instance, configure it for automatic login to an admin user account, drop Disk Utility into that account's login items & it will automatically launch at the end of the boot process. You can do the same with shell scripts or Applescript applications for just about as much automation as your scripting skills & imagination can dream up.
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OK, heres the story. i have an imac. i use bootcamp to run OSX and XP. things are good. but i run out of space, so i buy myself a 2tb bare drive and swap it out. so i put the original internal with OSX and XP into an external firewire/usb enclosure. I install refit. I hold option on startup and it shows that i have a windows and a mac OS i can boot from the External firewire disk. looks great, but when i choose the windows from the Ext disk, it doesn't boot, instead it loads windows7 on my new 2tb internal disk.
i hear its hard to boot windows XP from an external disk. my professor told me it has something to do with the boot.ini file on the XP disk... something about changing the value of the "rdisk" to 1, which i have done.
i am not trying to reinstall xp, rather just boot from it because i have so many applications/plugins that i do not wish to reinstall.
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anyone have any ideas?

Hi boi,
you can't start ANY windows OS from external HD...

Running itunes from an external hard drive

Hi there,
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I've read the following link and am clear on the procedure...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449
Sure, I can go through the process and see what happens, however, I thought I'd ask to see if anyone else has done something similar and am curious as to whether they encountered any issues / have any words of wisdom to impart?!
I have an Apple TV which syncs with my iTunes, as well as an iPad and an iPhone. The iPad and iPhone sync when connected, but the Apple TV syncs over WiFi...
Will I have any side affects by moving my library to an external hard drive?
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MacFormat Issue 236 page 65.
Sorted!

How to run Boot Camp on External Hard Drive?

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