OS X :: Bout Booting Windows From External Drive
Mar 10, 2010
I'm planning on getting a SSD to put in my Mac Mini within the next month or two, but there are a few questions I have about it. I'll still have the 160 GB HDD that's in the Mini currently, and I'll buy an enclosure for it. But what I want to do, as to save space on the SSD (since I'll be buying 80 GB probably) is boot Windows 7 off the 160 GB. Is this possible?
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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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Sep 20, 2009
My parents bought a new iMac and have finally made the switch. There's one program on their old hard drive that they need to use. I've installed Windows XP on the new iMac, put the old pc hard disk in a USB2 enclosure and would love to use that to boot off of. The problem is that the iMac doesn't consider that as an option when booting.
The other issue is that if the power goes off and the computer reboots, the default seems to be for the Windows partition and the Mac OSX.
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May 15, 2009
So here is my bright idea. I still may want to have Windows on my iMac for work projects *sigh* I think I came up with a solution, I rather not partition my iMac (when I buy it) 1TB drive for Windows. Don't want Windows on my main disk - I need the storage for Mac things, personal stuff etc. Is it possible to boot from a Firewire connected external HDD to run Windows?
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Feb 21, 2009
My step dad is showing some interest in my Mac and wants to give it a go. I was thinking of installing OS X on an external drive and booting directly into it from his PC. Is that possible?
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Jun 26, 2009
I have a mac pro running Leopard with Time Machine backup on an external 500GB FREECOM drive. My issue is that I cannot boot my mac while the drive is connect, because it seems it tries to boot from the external drive and it starts displaying a flashing folder with a question mark in it. So everytime I need to fire up my machine, I need to disconnect the external drive > boot > connect the external drive.
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Jul 12, 2009
My MacBook's hard drive recently took a turn for the worst. I can't boot up from my external with the drive still installed. If I take my internal hard drive out can I then boot up my mac from my external?
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Jul 24, 2010
At one point I had my external monitor set up to work with windows, so I know how, but since then I have reinstalled windows. I haven't used windows in a long time, so didn't bother setting it back up. Recently, my macbook's screen broke, I can boot into OS X fine by plugging in an external keyboard or mouse, or simply by closing the lid quickly before the primary display loads, thus booting it into clamshell mode using only an external display. I cannot however do this with windows, and since my screen is broken I cannot set the display properties as I cannot see them. Is there any way to either boot windows into clamshell mode or set the display properties using keyboard shortcuts?
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May 7, 2009
Is it possible to boot from a external hard drive instead of my internal drive?
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Sep 27, 2009
I have a Black Macbook with 2GB ram, 250GB HDD, 2.4GHz Processor and have been trying to boot off of my 320GB firewire External HDD but it has so far been unsuccessful. I have the external formatted as GUID Partition Table, and have the four system disk folders on the drive (Applications, Library, System, Users) which I copied from a time machine backup. I have tried booting the MB while holding down the option key and the external HDD appears as a drive available for booting on. But when I select the external HDD a cross with a circle around it appears and it boots off the internal HDD instead of the external HDD.
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May 15, 2009
Environment clones ( made by Leopard compatible SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner) to two separate LaCie Firewire drives will not boot from those drives Leopard (10.5.6) running on an old 14" iBook G4 1.1 GHZ. Both SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner declared the clones bootable, and they are selectable as Startup drives. All three drives (internal included) are partitioned using Apple Partition Map and OSX Extended Journaled. Has anyone met and solved this problem? BTW - I did read somewhere that Leopard is designed to use the GUID partition scheme; but this is of no use with a PPC Mac. Could this be the source of the problem?
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Aug 17, 2010
Specifically, I'm considering a freelance design gig for which the client supplies an external firewire drive with a) a bootable system, b) a more recent version of the Adobe Suite than I own (necessary - his files are all in the more recent version), c) all of the project files, and d) Suitcase and all of the tons of different fonts required. The gig is uninspiring - a coupon catalog - but each of his many clients gets to supply either their own print-ready PDF or copy/photos/fonts for him/me to layout...the result being there's a ton of fonts.
So in other words, it's a preconfigured system to simplify different people working on the same files. Not at the same time, obviously, but the idea being that a new person can simply boot up from this drive and go right to work. I've scanned the drive with VirusBarrier and found nothing wrong with it. And I don't see any suspicious programs in the Applications folder. And I don't have any reason to suspect that that this guy would do anything underhanded...but I'm understandably (I think) nervous. Is there a way to protect my internal drive/files when I boot from an external drive? It would give me peace of mind if there were steps I could take that would allow me to boot from his drive without worrying about the possibility that there MIGHT be a program or script or something that might muck about with my computer.
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Jul 29, 2010
This week I discovered that the hard drive on my white Core 2 Duo macbook is failing. It's of course out of warranty. I have superduper and am in the process of getting things ready to swap out the drive for a new one. Before going ahead with the new install, however, I wanted to test out the bootability of my superduper backup. I held option while restarting and chose to boot from the backup icon. The OSX tiger splash screen appeared and slowly booted up but then a login window appears asking for a name and a password. I assumed it was asking for my administrator name and password.
Therefore I entered that information. However, after entering the information and clicking on the login button the window shook back and forth and shook off my password as if to say "No. No!" I tried entering the admin information again and again. I tried the short name. I tried to reset my user information. Nothing worked. So, I tried to redo my backup thinking that there might be some issues on that side of things. But now my backup isn't complete. It's lagging at about 14 gigs shy of the full copy. I want to get this machine back to working order but am running stuck.
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Mar 9, 2009
I just set up an old G4 Mac Mini with a 1.5 GHz PPC chip and 64 MB VRAM as an HTPC with the intent to use it to watch Hulu and ABC.com and other sites where you can stream TV shows online. However, Hulu is very very choppy. The audio's fine but the video is pretty disappointing. In full screen it's really just a series of still pictures. I know Flash on the mini is supposed to not be that great, but is there anything I can do?
Is there any way to change the video settings of the g4 or of the TV to improve the streaming video playback? I'm playing it on a 40" Samsung LCD connected via DVI--> HDMI.
I'm booting off an external firewire drive through Firewire 400 and my concern is that perhaps this is the problem - the slowdown is not coming from the processor or the VRAM but rather from the Firewire. Can anyone with a similar setup let me know if this works for them. Is there anyway to speed up the I/O between the G4 and the Firewire drive? it's a LaCie 250GB D2 Hard Drive Extreme with Triple Interface.
According to the Activity Monitor, Safari's using 72% of the CPU to play from Hulu. According to Hulu's support page, the Mac Mini meets the system requirements. I'm just trying to watch the SD videos, not the HD. I have Flash 10 and Safari 3.1.2.
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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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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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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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Oct 11, 2009
This only happens when I choose to boot into windows. The screen sort of hangs for about 20 seconds in a black screen with an underscore at the top left corner before even starting to boot into windows. I know its normal for this to happen for like 5 seconds tops, but this is happening for about 20 seconds and its dreadful trying to boot into Windows 7 because it takes so long. When windows is done starting up i don't even get any messages saying startup failed or something like that. This is so annoying that I even reinstalled everything but the same thing happened.
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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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Jul 14, 2009
I have Windows Xp and Windows 7 on two different hard drives in my Mac Pro. Windows 7 had been working fine, but I needed XP to run some older programs that 7 couldn't do. I have been working in XP some time now but when I try to boot from the Windows 7 drive it just reverts to the XP one. Even when I click on the Windows 7 drive to make it the start up drive it still goes to XP. Is there something I'm doing wrong?
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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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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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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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