Success: moving bootcamp partition to an external drive

I experienced constant disconnect from thunderbolt. Is your connection stable?

Your reply give me hope on Thunderbolt SSD bootcamp.

After reading the following post, I am starting to put the blame on Seagate Thunderbolt adapter.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4583967

Thanks a lot. I managed to get Windows 7 Pro on an SSD via Thunderbolt following the instructions in this post.

I used a DeLock external casing, but now that I am sure it works, I ordered a 2-bay Thunderbolt enclosure from Neweg. OSX and W7 both on Samsung Evo SSD, the increase in speed and responsiveness is phenomenal!

Thymen

unfortunately, it did not turn out well with the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual, Thunderbolt. It appears that this drive, when connected via Thunderbolt, prevents Windows from booting. I mean, even using the Apple-supported way of Bootcamp on the internal drive. Whatever you do, the Thunderbolt connection is limited to use with OSX.

I tried all day to figure out if there was a solution. I already own a CallDigit Thunderbolt dock, with 3 USSB 3.0 ports, but that route took me nowhere either.

So getting both OSX and W7 booting from an SSD is only for those having a system with either a built-in SSD, or USB 3.0.

Spend several hundreds of dollars for what turns out to be a useless black brick on my desk...

I was able to load Windows 10 Home Edition into a Thunderbolt dock (RocketStore) for a 500G SSD which is connected to a Macbook Pro 2.6 Quad-core i7 Retina (Late 2015). I used a modified version of your steps (mine in all caps):

Step 1: Get the Thunderbolt drive to work under your Bootcamp Windows 7 installation. [MY RETINA MACBOOK HAD NO TROUBLE RECOGNIZING THE THUNDERBOLT DRIVE IN WIN10 IN BOOTCAMP SO I SKIPPED STEP 1]

This should be simple enough, but proved to be a little tricky. Here’s what I did (assumes you are running Mac OS X before you begin):

1. Make sure your Thunderbolt drive is disconnected before proceeding.

2. Restart your Mac and hold down the option key (alt key on some keyboards) during startup.

3. Choose the Windows drive to start up Windows 7 on your Bootcamp partition.

4. After log in to Windows 7, download the necessary driver software for your Thunderbolt drive (find it at the manufacturer’s homepage of your Thunderbolt drive - in my case lacie.com).

5. If the downloaded driver installer is in a compressed format (like zip for example) be sure to decompress it before running the driver installer.

6. Shut down your computer.

7. Connect your Thunderbolt drive to your computer.

8. Start up in Windows 7 (see items 2 & 3 above) and if it all went well, you should now be able to see your Thunderbolt drive under Start>Computer.

Step 2: Format your Thunderbolt drive in NTFS-format.[I HAD TO FORMAT MY SSD AS A FAT FILE IN OS X AND THEN AFTER THE SSD IS CONNECTED TO WIN 10 IN BOOTCAMP, I HAD TO FIRST CONVERT THE SSD FROM "MBR" TO "GPT" IN DISK MANAGEMENT TOOL THEN SECONDLY REFORMAT IT IN NTFS IN DISK MANAGEMENT TOOL OF WIN10.]

Still running Windows 7 with your Thunderbolt drive connected and visible to the system, it is now time to format your external Thunderbolt drive in NTFS-format. There are several ways of doing this. I used the procedure described here at tedhhack.co.uk.

Step 3: Follow the directions at intowindows.com to clean install Windows 7 onto your external Thunderbolt drive.[I DIDN'T HAVE TO INSTALL WIN10 ONTO THE THUNDERBOLT DRIVE; I JUST HAD TO BOOT UP WITH THE WIN10 DVD WHICH ALLOWED ME TO INSTALL INTO THE THUNDERBOLT DRIVE]

As described at intowindows.com, this involves downloading Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) and running command line tools. At step 9 in the described process at intowindows.com, at the point where the installer asks if the drive you are installing to is a USB hard disk, the correct input is Y for yes, even if your external drive is a Thunderbolt drive (and obviously not a USB hard disk).

At step 10 in the described process at intowindows.com (Reboot your PC), remember to hold down the option (or alt) key at every restart in the installation process, so as not to start up in Mac OS X. Also, since your machine now has two Windows 7 installations, Windows Boot Manager will appear and ask you to “Choose an operating system to start” and there is a list of two Windows.

I don’t know how to tell which one is on the external drive and which one is on the internal drive at this point, but I started with the top one on the list and this turned out to be the one I wanted (the newly installed one on the external drive). If you pick the wrong one (on the internal drive) at first, simply restart the computer and choose the other one. You know you got the right one when the installation process continues and asks for further input.

After the Windows installation is complete (there will be at least one other restart required - remember to hold down the option (alt) key to start up in Windows, and choose the same Windows on the list in the Windows Boot Manager), you’ll be running a freshly installed, but crippled Windows 7, as you still haven’t installed the specific drivers for your hardware. But don’t worry, that will be fixed in the next step.

Step 4: Clone your Bootcamp partition from your internal drive to the external Thunderbolt drive. [I DIDN'T NEED TO DO ANY OF THIS BECAUSE WIN10 ON THE THUNDERBOLT DRIVE BOOTED WITHOUT NEEDING BOOTCAMP. ONE THING I NOTICED WAS THAT THE WIFI DRIVER DIDN'T WORK BECAUSE I DIDN'T HAVE THE BOOTCAMP PARTITION. THAT DIDN'T MATTER AS I USED A USB TO ETHERNET ADAPTER.]

In this step you will copy all the software, drivers, settings and other files from your Bootcamp partition on your internal drive to your external Thunderbolt drive. The easiest way to do that is to clone your Windows partition - and to that end you’ll need to download some free software: AOMEI Backupper Standard 2.0 fits the bill perfectly, as it will let you clone at the same time as resizing the partition to fit your external Thunderbolt drive (I went from a 50GB internal Bootcamp partition to a 120GB external Thunderbolt SSD).

1. Download AOMEI Backupper Standard 2.0 (I used the 17MB download for Windows 7), install it, and run it.

2. In the left column choose “Clone” and in the right column choose “Partition Clone”. By choosing Partition Clone instead of Disk clone, you won’t ruin the newly created (but invisible) boot partition on the external Thunderbolt drive.

3. Press Next and choose your internal Bootcamp partition as the Source Disk.

4. Press Next again and choose your external Thunderbolt drive (your newly installed Windows 7) as the Destination Disk.

5. Press Next again and you’ll get a warning that you will erase the contents of the destination partition and it asks if this is what you really want to do. Press Yes to this question.

6. Next screen is an Operation Summery. Toward the bottom of the Operation Summery screen there are a few interesting options: Edit Size of Partition, Clone Sector by Sector and Align Partition to Optimize for SSD.

7. If your destination partition is larger than your source destination like mine was, press Edit Size of Partition. This will take you to another screen, where you can drag to resize the partition. I dragged this all the way to the right to give Windows 7 the full size of my external Thunderbolt drive.

8. Leave the checkbox Clone Sector by Sector unchecked.

9. If your external Thunderbolt drive is an SSD, put a check in the checkbox entitled Align Partition to Optimize for SSD.

10. Now press the Start Clone button.

11. When the cloning process is done, exit AOMEI Backupper and restart your computer (holding down the option or alt key) to start up in your new clone of your old Windows 7 with all the same software, drivers, settings and files.

Step 5: Enjoy running all your Windows 7 applications from your external Thunderbolt drive!

will it work on 3.0 usb external ssd drive too?