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Will dual-booting Windows 10 on a flash drive give me more space?

I have dual-booted Windows 10 on my Macbook Pro (Catalina) but couldn't partition a lot of space because I have a lot of programs/applications downloaded on my Mac and I have a lot of things taking up space in the "Other" category for some reason. I was able to dual-boot Windows successfully, but I need to download an application on Windows and I don't have enough space for that. If I use Boot Camp again and dual-boot Windows 10 to a USB flash drive, will it allow more space for me to be able to download the Windows application/program that I need? Will I still need a lot of space on my hard drive?


I tried researching but I didn't find a clear answer on whether dual-booting on a USB drive will give me more space or not. I just need to download a Windows application but don't have space on my hard drive for it after I dual-booted windows.

MacBook Pro 13”, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jan 26, 2020 9:12 PM

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Posted on Jan 26, 2020 9:37 PM

Leave your internal Windows installation intact. Let us say this is the drive C:. Format an external drive as NTFS, let us say D:. Install all your additional software on D:, as long as common files on C: do not need a lot of disk space, you can run programs from D:. Instead of a flash drive, use an external USB3 (or Thunderbolt) disk, if possible. USB2 will be too slow.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 26, 2020 9:37 PM in response to maa19

Leave your internal Windows installation intact. Let us say this is the drive C:. Format an external drive as NTFS, let us say D:. Install all your additional software on D:, as long as common files on C: do not need a lot of disk space, you can run programs from D:. Instead of a flash drive, use an external USB3 (or Thunderbolt) disk, if possible. USB2 will be too slow.

Will dual-booting Windows 10 on a flash drive give me more space?

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