Can I run windows 10 (bootcamp) off an external SSD with Catalina?

[Sir Ruben]

Hi All,

Apologies if this has been covered off before, but I'm feeling ill at the moment so I am hoping to get some quick answers. Basically I have 2019 27" iMac 5k with an internal 512 SSD. Due to the capacity its a little small to shoehorn Windows 10 on there as well. On my previous iMac I had a 1TB HDD so space wasn't as much of an issue.

So ideally I would like to purchase a 1TB external SSD and use bootcamp (as I did on my old Mac) to dual boot Windows 10 from it.

Is this supported and is it straightforward? If not, are there workarounds and do they come with any potential issues or risks?

Thanks for any advice on this, its much appreciated!

 

[Mike Boreham]

If you go to the Windows on Mac forum, and search with "External" you will get a lot of hits.

I have done it in the past but that was a few years ago now.

 

[kryza]

I currently have bootcamp running on El Capitan. Do I have to delete the partition bootcamp to upgrade to Catalina or not? will the already installed bootcamp properly work in Catalina?