Use Boot Camp with portable SSD drive

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Level 1

8 points

Use Boot Camp with portable SSD drive

Hi all.

I would need some advice, please. I'm about to fully clone my Windows drive to a portable SSD drive which I intend to use with my Mac. I want to have the option to either boot up in Mac (internal SSD) or boot in Windows (via external/portable SSD). I have done researched but cannot find exactly what I'm looking for. All the examples talk about installing a new version of Windows on the external drive and that's not what I want. My question would thus be:

Are there special preparations/formats that I need to perform on my portable SSD drive before cloning it and before my Macbook can use it?
How do I go about in getting my portable SSD drive (with Windows) workable with my Mac so that I can have the option to boot up in windows (via portable SSD)
How and where should I install Boot Camp and is Boot Camp sufficient or are there any other software I would need as well.

Thanks heaps all

Mac Pro

Posted on May 11, 2020 9:14 AM

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Answer 1

May 12, 2020 6:55 AM in response to acdewaal

Neither Microsoft nor Boot Camp support installing and running Windows on an external drive. Check with the Parallels site to see if Parallels can be installed on an external drive and whether you can run Windows in Parallels on an external drive. This configuration will be very slow.

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Answer 2

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

May 12, 2020 5:15 AM in response to acdewaal

Windows on external disks is not officially supported by Apple. You will need to look at disk cloning software or virtualization software to allow you to run Windows from an external disk.

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Answer 3

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

May 12, 2020 10:22 AM in response to acdewaal

acdewaal wrote:

Just to confirm - If I run Parallels on my Mac, then I can use Windows on my portable SSD

There are two variants for virtualization engines.

A virtual machine using a virtual disk. In this case, the storage for the virtual disk can be external or internal, as long as there is reasonable IO performance.
A virtual machine that imports a Bootcamp/Windows installation (and does not use a virtual disk).

This can help you decide the location of the storage layer.

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Answer 4

acdewaal Author

Level 1

8 points

May 12, 2020 5:33 AM in response to Loner T

Many thanks @LonerT. Just to confirm - If I run Parallels on my Mac, then I can use Windows on my portable SSD

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Use Boot Camp with portable SSD drive

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