Q: How to run Boot Camp on External Hard Drive?

After upgrading my Windows 7 Pro in Boot Camp to 10 and making the Windows 10 Pro DVD using the Media Creation Tool downloaded from MS, the Windows 10 DVD has UEFI/EFI compatibility. Heads up!

Windows Disc will boot and install.

I installed Windows 10 Pro exclusively on my internal HD and Yosemite 10.10.5 on my external LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt HD.

Cheers!!

jndupuis1 wrote:

 

I installed Windows 10 Pro exclusively on my internal HD and Yosemite 10.10.5 on my external LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt HD.

The question is related to BC/Windows on an external disk not OS X. OS X can be run from an external disk, which is by design (please see - How to install OS X on an external drive connected to your Mac - Apple Support ).

Thunderbolt uses PCI semantics to access external disks. To install Windows on an external disk, a TB drive can be used.

Hi Loner

This is Steve again, it has been a while. As you may recall, we were discussing Windows 7 on an external drive, and eventually I was able to do so, using La Cie SSD 500 Gig Thunderbolt that carries the Windows System and all Window environment data as C:(LILY), but relies on a "dummy" 20 GB Bootcamp partition in the main internal 1TB Fusion drive (Mac Mini). It worked and still works like a charm. At the time were were continuing the discussion about how to back up, or better "clone" LILY. I did stop there, because this required the purchase of another LaCie SSD drive. Now I have done so, but I have run into a dead end: Adter I used Winclone to clone LILY onto the new drive, Windows 7 did not boot from the new drive, and I cannot even boot from Windows 7 install disk, because there are no drivers (mouse and keyboard are dead). The original set up continues to work. I believe that the problem is the following: In my working set up, the dummy Bootcamp partition is GUID and FAT-formatted, while LILY is MBR and NTFS formatted. Winclone will refuse to restore to the destination disk (the new LaCie drive) as long as it is MBR, but it needs to be MBR to work. Do you have suggestions? One idea would be to clone LILY to the new drive in the Windows environment using Acronis or something similar. However, because Thunderbolt dose not work under Windows 7, the target disk would need to be connected by USB. The whole thing with Windows 7 is a real *****, because I understand that Windows 10 has addressed these issues, and I am going to upgrade eventually. But I do need to have the Windows 7 functionality because most of my customers are not expecting to upgrade to Windows 10 for a long time. Please advise you or refer to other expert.

Thanks, Steve

Connect your new LaCie to your Mac via Thunderbolt and Reboot into Windows. Do you see the external disk? If yes, let us look at the partitions and the MBR to see what is going on.

LOner,

If I connect the second drive through Thunderbolt, Windows will not boot. It will boot only if the new drive is either disconnected or connected through USB3 port. I can see the drive though if I boot up under Mac OSX.

Stefan

Let us look at it from the OSX side.

YYes, I am in OS X now

Post the output of diskutil list and then we can dig deeper.

Do you want to post a new discussion, which will make it a bit cleaner?

OK, Go ahead pls

Anyway, the output is:

acMiniSH:~ pentelho$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0

   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1

   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            121.0 GB   disk0s2

   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3

/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1

   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1

   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            979.3 GB   disk1s2

   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.1 MB   disk1s3

   4:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                20.0 GB    disk1s4

/dev/disk2 (internal, virtual):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:                  Apple_HFS Gise                   +1.1 TB     disk2

                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2, disk1s2

                                 6614C729-98D2-4522-BF2C-7B727225F0CE

                                 Unencrypted Fusion Drive

/dev/disk3 (external, physical):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *512.1 GB   disk3

   1:               Windows_NTFS LILY                    512.1 GB   disk3s1

/dev/disk4 (external, physical):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *512.1 GB   disk4

   1:                 DOS_FAT_32 LILY2                   512.1 GB   disk4s1

I am not quite sure how to set up a new discussion, never done it.

Please see Find answers and ask new questions .

The new discussion is at Cloning of Windows Partition in Bootcamp

does it really work? Im using MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2015) Processor 1.6 GHz Intel Core i5 Memory 4 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 is it really possible to bootcamp on my external hard drive? How about the Transcend Jet Drive Lite 130, able to bootcamp like the external hard drive? Please help me. I do not wish to bootcamp on my internal  drive......

I Bought it from eBay and it works well . I think it was called Bootcamp partition for Macbook or something like that  and it's installed on ultra fit SanDisk Pendrive (: