Bootcamp on Thunderbolt SSD

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Level 1

134 points

Bootcamp on Thunderbolt SSD

I have a Windows 8 bootcamp partition on my internal SSD on my 15" retina MBP. To give OS X more space, I cloned the bootcamp partition on to an external SSD through thunderbolt. On my Mac Mini, I can actually boot in to Windows 8 on this external drive through thunderbolt and it works wonderfully. However, on my macbook, I select the external SSD to boot to and it just comes up with a black page with a blinking cursor at the very top left.

I'm not sure what I did wrong? I can boot to the external windows partition just fine on my mac mini through thunderbolt, so I am not sure what I have done wrong. Could it be that I have kept the internal Windows partition in the internal drive on the MBP, so that when I select a partition to boot to I see two Windows partitions?

MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)

Posted on Jun 25, 2013 12:17 AM

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Answer 1

Jun 25, 2013 7:44 AM in response to nightsd01

Windows can not boot from an external drive. This is a Microsoft restriction. Windows creates and requires a system registry which your external drive does not have. I don't know how it is booting from an external drive on your Mac Mini. But this question has been asked both here and in many Windows forums many times. Maybe Windows 8 is different when it comes to installation and booting from an external drive.

You should check some of the Windows forums to see what they are saying about booting Windows from an external drive. It does not matter whether the external drive is on a Mac or on a Windows PC, the Microsoft/Windows restriction is the same.

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Answer 2

nightsd01 Author

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134 points

Jun 25, 2013 6:45 PM in response to BobTheFisherman

You are correct with an external USB/FireWire drive, but Windows works just fine on thunderbolt. I can boot fine to it on my mac mini and my friends can do the same on their macs. Thunderbolt itself is not the issue.

I think it might be an issue with the retina display on my macbook pro, but I am not entirely sure. It works fine on macs that don't have retina displays. Is there a way to resolve boot issues caused by displays?

I just get a black screen with a blinking cursor at the top left, I'm not sure what that means other than windows being unable to boot.

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Answer 3

nightsd01 Author

Level 1

134 points

Jun 26, 2013 1:36 AM in response to nightsd01

Well I finally got it working! I had to create a empty Bootcamp partition on my mac (20GB, the minimum size) and reinstall windows 8 on the SSD, and it now works just perfect booting from the thunderbolt SSD. I would prefer not to have to create an empty Bootcamp partition at all, but it's better than nothing.

It works very well, too. 373MB/S read and 356MB/S write speeds on the external thunderbolt SSD. It's a seagate thunderbolt dock I put the Samsung 840 Pro 512Gb SSD on, and it is working with SATA 6gb/s. I can take the external SSD from one mac to another and boot in to the same exact windows partition, it's fantastic.

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Answer 4

Nov 17, 2013 6:34 AM in response to nightsd01

how exactly did you do it? U connected the thuderbolt SSD on the mac and you created the bootcamp partition on the thunderbolt ssd or on the internal drive?

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Answer 5

gaen

Level 1

0 points

Aug 23, 2015 2:24 AM in response to nightsd01

How is this possible ? i thought Win has no Thunderbolt compatibility nor drivers for it.... on my Mac Retina Late 2014 the clone process is possible, but anytime i want to boot from TB disk, i get a defective Win Installation error on my screen 😠 with the ability to run the advanced repair mode F8 which cannot solve the problem. i fixed the mbr, but no luck...

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