How to run Boot Camp on External Hard Drive?

Digitalclips wrote:

BTW I also made an AMD driver installation that runs Crossfire for dual GPUs that works better than the Boot Camp drivers. The info on how was on Mac Rumors site. In fact I have not installed any Bootcamp Drivers. In tests I did they messed up the Windows installation.

Can you post a link to this?

Sure here you go. It's not too well explained but all you do is substitute the drivers from AMD folder with the ones from Apple while retaining the rest of the Apple installation.

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/catalyst-15-4-working-on-nmp.1869023/#post-

BTW ... I noticed while istalling Windows 10 on Boot Camp on my Mac Pro yesterday (just messing around) it installed support for Catalyst much to my shock. Apple seem to have updated to support both GPUs. The Device Manager in Windows 10 showed them correctly as FirePro500s in my case. The Catalyst control interface is far simpler than the one I have from the DIY version which installs look alike drivers intended for the genuine AMD for PC cards.

Being a curious type with too much time, I tested GTA V frame rates on two identical SSDs both running identical set ups (WinClone is wonderful) and sure enough the new Apple Catalyst / Crossfire set up works but it stutters under on heavy load and nothing like the frame rates I am used to. The DIY one is silky smooth at 90 f.p.s. with V-Sync off. So it seems Apple are not providing as good a driver.

My next wish is a simple hack to make a Crimson / DirectX 12 driver work, I am stuck at Omega, the previous version with DirectX 11 for now as the current hack is way beyond me.

Hi !!!

I have an imac late 2012 without efi boot externally from disk.. As i now model from 2013 can boot externally...

Can i try the method you described ??? Can i then boot from external ssd when external have osx in one partition and windows into second partition???

Thanks !!!

HI !!!

please can you tell me IF can i boot into windows externally from thunderbolt ssd with imac late 2012 ????

i think it must be efi compliant from external booting and only imac after 2013 can ...

Thanks

Hi!!

Please can you tell me if can I boot into windows from external drive in iMac late 2012?? Because I am trying but no success. As I now iMac 2012 late don't support efi booting from external drive.

Thanks in advance.

AS far a I know, external Windows per Bootcamp requires a thunderbolt SSD drive and a thunderbolt enabled Mac which I am not sure applies to iMac 2012. I have described in an earlier post how this works with Windows 7 on a 2015 MacMini (the core Bootcamp though ~40 MB) need to reside on an internal partition). I have heard that with Win 10 everything can be on the external drive but I have not tried it out.

I am a total noob here. I have a mac mini less than a year old. Running 10.11.4 It has a fusion internal drive. I can not get bootcamp to find either the internal drive, or either of my thunderbolt external drives? External drives are WD: my passports. Shouldn't I be able to create a Windows bootable version on one of these drives through base camp?

Thank you,

John

Yes it is possible to install Windows 10 on a external USB hard drive. Follow the technical recipe below: "Installing Windows 10 on an external USB drive on a Macbook By Jeremiah Byerley"

http://www.jeremiahbyerley.com/installing-windows-10-on-an-external-usb-drive-on -a-macbook/

It works like a dream.

Look at Run Windows 10 from an external SSD disk? Yes, it works! YES!

I got Windows 10 Education running on my 13" 2015 MacBook Air, installed on a 1TB Seagate HDD. The method given by Pierre80 didn't work for me though. I would get a bunch of errors in the bcdboot command. (typing BCDBOOT G:\WINDOWS /S /V G: lets you see details of the process)

In the end what worked for me was this great YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2aZeGVETPs

Apparently for this method you don't even need Microsoft AIK; only the ImageX tool.

And as for the problem of transferring files between OS X and Windows, once Windows was up and running I simply shrunk the Windows partition (from the Manage utility in Windows) and formatted the resulting space with FAT. I even used this partition to transfer the Boot Camp drivers!

Good luck!

HI, I have the same question.

I Tried the solution proposed, but it just do not work...

the Mac does not recognize the SD card as a boot device.

additionally to that, I tested in a regular notebook and the screen was stuck in the first screen, with the blue windows logo.

How much time is W8 supposed to take to "start" installing?

do you guys have any additional idea to make the SD card boot recognizable by Mac?

Hello Pierre,

I'm trying to install windows on my external usb3/uasp drive since months. I follow many tutorials like yours to achieve this, but in the end never get my macbook air 2015 to boot from the external drive. So, here is my question about the formating: you create only one ntfs partition and don't precise what kind of table you use. So, how did it work for you ? I got the following experience: I must have a GPT partition scheme and an EFI partition to be able to see my external drive on the macbook. With MBR scheme, it doesn't work, as well as having only one partition like you.

But in the end, even if I see my drive as an "EFI boot" while pressing on "alt" on startup, I never had anything else than a black screen. Then, the macbook would start on the internal hard drive.

I must add that I got a windows 7 physical machine, with an usb3 port and that I can boot on windows 10 with your partition schema and formating from it. It doesn't work with windows 7, but I think it has something to do with usb3 drivers. This machine recognize my drive as an internal drive, which is awesome because it work in SCSI mode (UASP).

I miss something maybe with my macbook. Have you any idea ? I think it has something to do with the ability, at firmware level of my macbook to boot on external usb3 drives. Is there any way to have a look in the firmware of the macbook air I have ? Modify something ?

Is F: your Windows Install Media?

Hi,

I realized what I was doing wrong. I was trying to do this with windows 10 and Microsoft changed the install.wim to an install.esd file. I used windows 8 and it worked.

Please remember to back up OS X, Windows and create a Windows System Restore point.