Bob Owen
Level 1
(5 points)
Q: How to install Windows 7 on extra Internal Disk
Apple's latest "Boot Camp Installation & Setup Guide" does not provide clear instructions to accomplish what I believe to be possible. A review of this forum for past articles provides more clues, but still leaves me wondering what are the actual steps to achieve my goal:
Install Windows 7 on my MacPro on an internal disk that is not in the first hard drive bay. I want to make the Windows disk it's own single partition, and keep my MacOS on it's own drive as it currently exists.
Here's what Apple's latest guide states:
"If you have a MacPro with more than one internal disk and you want to install Boot Camp on a disk that isn't in the first hard drive bay, remove the drives in the lower numbered bays. You can reinstall the drives after you install Boot Camp."
I have a call in to Apple Support and it was immediately bumped up to Engineering because none whom I spoke with were able to answer the question. In fact, they told me that no one had ever asked the question before!
So I would like to understand the actual steps. Could I boot from the Windows CD and choose the internal disk I want to install it? Do I need Boot Camp to load and install the Apple supplied Windows drivers?
MacPro 2.66 GHz Quad-Core Xeon, 8 GB 1066 MHz DDR3, 3 internal drives. OS X 10.9.4
OS X Mavericks (10.9.4), 8 GB RAM
Bob Owen
Level 1
(5 points)
Ok, I completed the Windows 7 install. However, I did not figure out how to get the Mac to boot from the USB drive after following your instructions. I ended up booting from the Win 7 DVD loaded in my optical drive and installing the Windows support software from the USB drive. Here are the steps I used to accomplish the install. My Windows HD, the target of my Windows installation, was in Bay 3.
Steps to install Windows 7 on MacPro disk
- Run Disk Utility.
- Erase/format the additional hard drive as FAT.
- Erase/format USB drive as FAT.
- Run Boot Camp Assistant
- Download latest Windows support software to USB drive.
- Point to target hard drive and go-to next step.
- Exit Boot Camp Assistant.
- Load Windows 7 DVD (64-bit) into Mac’s optical drive.
- Shut down Mac.
- Open Mac and remove (disconnect) all hard drives except for target drive for Window 7 installation.
- Start Mac
- Mac should automatically start up from Windows 7 install disk in optical drive.
- [follow instructions in Apple’s latest “Boot Camp Installation & Setup Guide, Step 3: Install Windows on your Mac, p. 6” © 2013 Apple Inc.
- My machine accessed the Windows support software on the USB drive as part of the install process.
- Shut down Mac.
- Reinstall hard drive(s) in lower numbers bays that were removed in step 5) above.
- Restart Mac and follow instructions to set the default operation system; “Boot Camp Installation & Setup Guide, Step 4: Install the Windows support software, p. 9” © 2013 Apple Inc.
- You’re done!
Thank you for the help!
FYI - Last voice message from Apple support technician a couple of weeks ago was that they did not know how to accomplish what I was going to do. Guess they are focusing on the mobile market and don't have much experience with 'old' technology...
