Firmtek eSATA expresscard for bootable for bootcamp?

[Joony]

OWC's page says that this card is not bootable.

But can a bootcamp partition be installed on a eSATA drive?

(I didn't get my eSATA enclosure yet, so I can't test it)

Based on the long thread Bootcamp + External HD, it's clear the Windows XP cannot be booted off of a firewire drive, but somewhat works off of a USB drive.

The Si3132 chipset also seems bootable based on this thread, with some "hacks" of course. But does the fact that it's an ExpressCard limit anything?

I'd like to boot to a fast SATA drive for boot camp for gaming purposes, and to not use up disk space on the internal MBP drive.

 

[robbieduncan]

If it can't boot OSX it certainly can't boot BootCamp! BootCamp only works on internal drives. If this can't boot OSX it would not be considered an internal drive under any interpretation.

 

[Joony]

robbieduncan, you should actually read some of the links...

Those that actually have the card, what does OS X see the drive as? Does it somehow know that it's a SATA drive connected externally? or does it see it as an internal SATA drive?

 

[Silentwave]

My 2SM2-E does not read the drives as internal or bootable when a valid system is cloned over.

 

[CanadaRAM]

The Firmtek PCI SATA cards are bootable in OSX. Not the ExpressCard or Cardbus interfaces.

 

[robbieduncan]

robbieduncan, you should actually read some of the links...

Those that actually have the card, what does OS X see the drive as? Does it somehow know that it's a SATA drive connected externally? or does it see it as an internal SATA drive?

As the manufacturers claim the card is not bootable then the system does not see it as what Apple consider an internal drive for these purposes. This means that the drive requires drivers to boot from. As these are not available in the EFI boot environment then no OS can boot from it.

The normal BootCamp restrictions are actually tighter than that. HID devices attached to USB or FireWire do actually have EFI drivers. But these are not bootable in BootCamp as Windows, by default, does not know how to boot from a USB or FireWire drive. I believe there are hacks around this but these won't work in the case of this SATA card until someone manages to get EFI to recognise it. My understanding would be that you would need new firmware on the card itself that provides EFI drivers at pre-boot time.