MacBook Pro :: Run Windows From An External Drive?
Jul 1, 2012
Recently my PC with Windows XP crashed- it's old and the motherboard went. I had a full version of Windows XP on there, and I would like to know what I need to do in order to run Windows off of that hard drive (I've taken it out and have it in an enclosure). Ideally, I would like to be able to plug in this external drive, and start a program that will allow me to run Windows off of this drive.
I have downloaded a trial of Parallels Desktop, which seems like it will work, but it needs me to install a transporter on the Windows drive before it can migrate the drive. The problem is, I can't access my drive anymore since my PC is no longer broken.
Info:MacBookPro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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Dec 10, 2010
Is it possible to use an external hard drive (WD Passport) for both osx and windows ?
I read WD Passport has some sort of software built in, and the partition for mac and windows differs.
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Mar 27, 2012
I traded out my optical drive for an ssd with the hopes of installing Windows 7 Home using a legit disk (32-bit). My attempts with using Boot Camp Assistant have led to a black screen with a blinking cursor.Assuming that Windows cannot load from the now external drive, is there another solution?
Info:
MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.3), Boot Camp Assistant
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May 20, 2012
I am currently making the switch from Windows, I can't wait for my MacBook to arrive. My lovely Dell currently has a 320 GB HD that would prove a very nice external backup storage unit. I plan to remove it and find a case to mount and use it as such!
Only problem is, I'm fairly certain that I'll run into some compatibility issues and have never used an external HD. I'm unsure of how the process works. This is the HD in my personal laptop (only PC I own), so it's not like I have it hooked up to play around with as an external at the moment.Â
The Hard Drive is a Toshiba MK3255GSX (SATA): [URL]  Can I connect with FireWire (or Is that dependent on my hard drive, or do I get a cable converter)?When/how do I partition it?Since this is my personal home use PC, it's loaded with a bunch of programs/Win32/cache/temp files/garbage. Can I just access/delete these from the Mac?Â
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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Dec 1, 2014
I got a brand new macbook air and want to set up an original Windows 8 DVD via bootcamp.
Problem: my external DVD needs 2 usb port connection so I want have a chance to plug in an usb drive at the same time. Any other choice to get along?
Info:
MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2014), iOS 8.1.1
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Sep 21, 2010
I had a Windows based PC a couple of years ago that had crashed. So recently i tried to put the files from my old hard drive from my Windows computer to my Mac. In order to keep track of what i have copied and what I haven't i thought it would be good to delete the stuff of my windows hard drive once it was copied. However, it doesn't let me delete anything of the Windows drive since it is set to read only. Is there a way around this? i've tried everything i can think of, but haven't found a soluti
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May 16, 2012
Ive recently purchased a new external hard drive. I plan to use it on both Apple and Windows OS.Â
I was told that if I do, then i could corrupt the files/data that I will be accessing on both computers.Â
Is there a "universal" format for an external drive which would prevent/avoid this kind of thing happening ? How should i format it or which format should i use so that i can use the drive both OS ?
Info:
MacBook Pro (13-inch Late 2011), Mac OS X (10.7)
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Jul 10, 2009
Is there any way without creating a usb bootable install cd that I can install windows XP onto my USB Hard Drive and boot from it in mac? If I can download a already bootable version of XP, please show me a link (please tell me if thats not allowed). Also, my H.D. doesn't show up when I boot up and hold option.
Thanks In Advance
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Aug 12, 2009
Im running on a UMP 13" base model + 4GB Ram, I want to know whats the best way to install widows on an external hard drive on my macbook ? do i need anti virus as well ?
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Sep 30, 2009
I'm having some huge problems. I have an .iso of Windows 7 Ultimate but my whole problem is that my macbooks dvd-rom drive crapped out on me a year ago so no burning no reading and Disc Utility wont let me restore the iso onto an external hard drive.
Does anyone have any idea what I could do to fix this? Is there a way I can put the image onto the hard drive at all?
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Nov 18, 2009
I have an external hard drive which I have successfully installed Windows XP SP3 onto. It was a long and painful process but I finally was able to get a modified XP install disc ready and from a Dell PC running Windows was able to install onto the external hard drive and I'm able to boot from it and everything. I did this on a PC because I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to boot correctly from an external drive in Mac.
Anyway, the hardest part is in the past and now my only problem is how to boot this external hard drive from my macbook, which is primarily what I want to use it on. I currently have a Macbook with three operating systems on it: Mac OS 10.5.8, Ubuntu Linux, and Windows XP SP3. I use rEFIt to boot into these operating systems. I tried using rEFIt to boot into XP on the external hard drive but it just gives me the legacy error messages saying that it couldn't load and noting the booting legacy os is not well supported by mac.
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Feb 2, 2012
I just bought my first mac (yay!) and am trying to transfer my files off of my old pc. The problem is that I stored all my personal files on an external hard drive, which is of course formatted for windows. My mac will open it, but it is "read only." I tried plugging it back into my pc and using the Migration Assistant to transfer my files over, but it was not detected (rest of the pc was).
However, the second time I tried plugging it in to my pc, it told me it would need to be formatted first. Obviously my mac has changed something on it, and now all my personal files are on a hard drive that is unusable by either my old pc or my new mac!
Info:MacBookPro
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Jun 4, 2014
How to copy files to external hard disk and use it for both mac and windows. there is the fat32 formatting bt i dont wanna use formatting because i already have a lot of content on the exteral hard disk.
Info:
MacBook Air (13-inch Mid 2013), OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)
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Aug 23, 2014
My G drive External Hard disk is not recognised by windows laptops yet it works on my MacBook Air
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Dec 4, 2014
Is it possible by any means to transfer mac files onto a windows “NTFS" formatted external hard drive...?? Â
Info:
MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)
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Feb 28, 2009
so today I bought a Toshiba external harddrive (black with green stripes?) and it has 160 GB capacity. I run windows on my Black MacBook, and am starting to run out of room on both (its 1/2 and 1/2 partitions of OS X and XP) Is there a way for me to put my windows onto my external harddrive and then restore my internal to ALL osx? then, I could just plug in the external harddrive and hold down something at start, and then it would boot up in windows?
(If this is possible, please just say it's not, but if it is, some detailed instructions
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Jun 1, 2010
I'm trying to access my WD Passport using firewire 800 on both Windows & Mac.
The current situation is:
I have partitioned the drive through Mac Disc Utility with three partitions.
1. Time Machine
2. Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
3. MS DOS (FAT32)
I can access all partitions when running the MAC OS.
However when using boot camp to lunch Windows 7 Ultimate (64bit) I cannot see the drive.
I've tried going into windows disc manager and can see the disc as an unallocated drive with no partitions.
What I want to achieve is to have the one external drive like this;
1: Time Machine (for MAC backups)
2: A partition for storing my MAC files on
3: A partition for storing windows files on (accessed while using bootcamp).
All without losing the existing backups on the drive.
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Jul 13, 2009
I have a 17" UMBP and would like to run Windows via either Fusions or Parallels. I prefer to keep the UMBP hard drive fully OSX so that way there is no way anything from Windows can affect the drive. I would like to ask then, if it would be possible to run Windows from an external hard drive? I have a spare Western Digital 250GB Passport that I am hoping I could use for this purpose.
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Dec 31, 2010
My CD/DVD L (and so on) isn't working right. I put the disc in, it makes a loud grinding noise. So I figured that it would be cheaper if I just bought an External CD-RW/DVD+/- DL +/- with lightscribe for a good drive.
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Mar 12, 2009
I have a Western Digital 500gb "My Book". I use it with my MacBook running Win XP Professional (via Parallels) and Mac OS X v10.5.6. Usually works, no problem, until recently: I wanted to save data from my Mac OS partition to the usb ext hard drive. I mounted the external drive. I created a new folder on the ext hard drive. I clicked and dragged. Then I get an error about "I/O error - write failed". Then I noticed an autorun.inf on my usb hard drive and a host.exe. I researched and saw that these are worms/virus. I tried several times to delete those files, and was finally successful. I also noticed that the folder I had just created to save data, would not delete. I also noticed a folder called "System Volume Information" and many sub folders, which would not delete. Since then, my external hard drive acts weird. On Windows, it freezes the operating system for long periods and will not open to reveal folders. I ran AVG Free on it in Windows, which discovered nothing.
I ran a few others (usb firewall, flash disinfector) and they do not discover anything malicious on this external drive. If I disconnect the external hard drive, everything runs smoothly. On Mac OS X, the ext drive mounts and opens, but my permissions are set to custom and I cannot change this (no check boxes visible). Plus the .mp3 files on this external hard drive cannot open (meaning they are not default to iTunes & using ctrl-click "open with" still will not let me select iTunes because its grayed out). It also looks like some of my data is missing from folders. I can see most of the data on this external hard drive, but what should I do to stabilize the external drive so I can get my precious data off and breathe again?
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Oct 12, 2009
Here's what I want to do. I have a 1.5 Tb external USB drive that I want to use with both my MacBook Pro and my soon-to-be Windows 7 desktop PC. I want to make image backups of both systems onto this external drive. For Windows, I'll use a boot CD with Acronis TruImage. For the Mac, I'll use SuperDuper! I've been playing around with partitioning this drive so that I can accomplish both of these goals and I'm a bit stumped. I was able to get a two partitions created - one for Windows (NTFS) and one for Mac (HFS+), and at first look they appear to work fine. However, there appear to be two problems:
1) When I look at the disk in Windows Disk Administrator, there are two smaller "hidden" partitions that I did not create. I think they were created with the Mac formatted its partition.
2) When I boot my Windows computer with the Acronis TruImage CD (and have the external drive plugged in to USB), the Acronis software doesn't see the external drive. When I boot into Windows, the drive is there and accessible.
So, I can deal with problem #1 if those hidden partitions are necessary for the Mac. However, I really need to resolve problem #2. My initial guess is that it can't see the drive because when I partitioned the drive on the Mac, I did not choose "Master Boot Record", rather, I chose the one for Intel-based Macs.
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Dec 28, 2010
This christmas I recieved a Seagate 2TB Expansion external drive. The bad news is that it has 'for PC' written all over it, and I own a Macbook with OS 10.6.2.
I am able to view the files already on the drive on my mac, but cannot copy or paste any new ones.
I was wondering if there is a way to format it so it will work with my mac, or whether I shoud take it to a computer shop to be modified, or whether I should just take it back to the shop and try to get a different one?
Also, to complicate the question, most of the files I want to copy onto the drive are on a PC.
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Apr 5, 2006
Can I put the bootcamp xp pro partition on an external drive? i only have 8 or so gb left on my internal, but have about 80gb on my external would that work? or do they have to be on the same drive
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Jul 29, 2007
Have been using Bootcamp, but decided to give VMWare a try - So far I like it
(Nice not having to reboot everytime)
Is there any way to get VMWare XP to find and be able to read/write to an external firewire hard drive ?
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Nov 3, 2008
I have an external drive that will need to be connected at different times to both my Mac (Leopard) and my Windows XP & Vista machines. I had it formatted for Mac OS (Journaled) but it wasn't readable in XP or Windows. So what is the best format so that all can read/write to it normally? NTFS? It needs to be able to handle larger files (4GB and bigger).
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Nov 27, 2008
Is there a hard drive that i would be able to connect both to my mac pro and windows computer at the same time and be able to access them from both computers?
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Mar 13, 2009
I have an Aluratek 60GB external harddrive.
I want to use it as storage for all my iTunes music. However, I would also like to be able to plug the hard drive (usb) into Windows computers to play my music.
I understand that it is possible to do this by formatting the drive as MS-DOS (FAT) using Disk Utility.
Okay, that's great.
Here's the problem:
I seem to somehow have damaged my harddrive (no idea how) so that I can't put more that 116.9mb of info on it before there is an error. However, when I partition off the first 4gb or so as free space, I have found that I can use the rest of the drive just fine.
BUUUT when partitioning the hard drive, the option for MS-DOS (FAT) is unavailable.
Do any of the other available formats work for both mac and pc? (I have Mac OS 10.5.6 and the other available formats appear to be: Mac Os X Extended (Journaled), Mac Os X Extended, Mac Os X Extended (Case-Sensitive, Journaled), Mac Os X Extended (Case-Sensitive), and, of course, Free Space.)
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May 18, 2009
I've got a external usb hard drive that I want to be able to use on both a Windows machine and a Mac OSX. I want to be able to read & right on both computers.
What format should I use for the drive? FAT, FAT32, or something else.
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Sep 16, 2009
I took my external drive round to a friends and plugged it into his windows 7 computer. When plugging it in a menu popped up asking if the disk should be initialized and before I could stop my friend he pressed it! So I have a drive which has basically had its partitions table wiped but is still full of data.
Now, I have used Disk Rescue II which by all accounts seems to have recovered all the data, however I am in the annoying position of having no free space on hard drives to download the recovered data to. Can I therefore use something like diskwarrior to fix the initialized hard drive and re-create the directory structure, preserving all of the data on the drive? If not I guess I will have to locate an extra external drive to download my data to.
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Oct 5, 2009
Is that possible? Cause my mac only has 80GB and my windows portion is low 6GB left.
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