External Boot Drive for Boot Camp Options

[vorbis1024]

So I need to run windows on my 2016 rMBP, and I don't have any storage to spare. I'm looking at options for running an external/portable boot drive.

The ideal solution in my head is a thunderbolt 3 (i.e. usb-c with thunderbolt) to m.2 sata adapter. This would be so amazing, and is so appealing to have windows stored on such a portable device, and the idea of it has me exited about the io that these macs support. However I can't find such an adapter, i'm surprised i would've thought a lot of people could make use of a tiny external ssd with thunderbolt 3 speeds. Anyway i'd appreciate any suggestions, what would you do?

 

[yann33]

i was in the same boat six months ago. i wanted to set up a bootcamp partition on my mac for gaming in windows, but didn't have enough internal storage. i had a quick browse for thunderbolt 3 enclosures that would connect to pcie ssds (my understanding is that TB3 doesnt provide any real advantages if the SSD is sata) but coun't find anything at reasonable prices at the time. i don't think things have really picked up since.

looks like the best performance would have been achieved through the Sonnet Fusion thunderbolt 3 PCIe drive (800$ for 512gb) - 2.1gb/s read and 1.55gb/s write speeds

the sandisk extreme 900 (290$ for 480gb) through usb3 advertises speeds of 850mb/s for read and write, but i found it way too large

i ended up going with the samsung t3 (bought the 512gb version for 200$) and followed this guide step by step.

i really like the small size, and when i just need to use non-demanding windows apps i just plug it into macOS and launch vmware fusion.

for gaming i just reboot under windows and it works like a charm with GTAV.