Can I boot a Windows OS on my iMac from an external HDD?

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Level 1

8 points

Can I boot a Windows OS on my iMac from an external HDD?

I have two hard disk drives:

One is inside of my 2009 iMac, running leopard. Also on my internal drive is a Windows OS partition, currently running windows 7. One is a WD 1TB external HDD, which I boot Mountain Lion off of. The thing is, I'm running out of room on my internal hard disk drive. Since it is entirely possible to boot Mountain Lion from my external HDD, would it be a good bet that I can make my iMac do the same for a Windows OS? Or is this not the case?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Sep 19, 2013 9:28 PM

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Answer 1

jefgreen Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 21, 2013 6:32 PM in response to jefgreen

Any ideas?

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Answer 2

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,532 points

Sep 21, 2013 7:08 PM in response to jefgreen

Microsoft does not allow a installation of any version of Windows on an EHD. This is not an OS X or iMac issue,it's strictly with MS Windows.

However, some people have developed hacks to make installing Windows on an EHD possible, the keyword is hacks so you are left on your own to find out how to do it and support it.

Sorry for the discouraging news but unfortunately that's how it is.

As a work around I'd recommend moving large libraries to another EHD, examples of large libraries are iTunes, iMovie & iPhoto. Apple provides instructions on how to do this, you can find them at:

iTunes: How to move the library to an EHD

iMovie: How to move the Library to an EHD

iPhoto: How to move the Library to an EHD

If you make these moves then you can do a standard installation of Windows on your iMac using either Boot Camp or virtualization software such as Parallels or Fusion.

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