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Running windows XP on an external hard disk?

farqueue

farqueue

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 18, 2006
456
32
Hello i own a macbook. I have a 300gb external hard disk. Just wondering how can i use bootcamp etc to install windows on it, without having to interfere with my macbooks HD.

And also running Mac OS X games like call of Duty and WoW from the hard disk. Is it possible?

Thanks
 
you post a good question, in it's current state what you ask is impossible to my knowledge since the bootloader that boot camp uses needs a partition on the boot disk. i don't think it's advanced enough to understand external devices.

i do have one thing to say however, WWDC is coming up soon, so we should get more details about the final status of boot camp then.

less than a month so hang tight
 
OSX can boot from firewire external disks, but not USB. so you could move your OSX system onto the external drive and have windows on the local one.

You would be very luck to get windows to boot from an external disk. With out of the box bootcamp it just isn't going to happen. Something like BartPE might worth exploring though.
 
Yup you can run WinXP from an external disk, USB or FireWire. It's rather quite simple.

The first thing you need to do is format your 300gb drive as a FAT32 file systems (if you don't do this beforehand your drives & partitions may not show up correctly in the Windows installer), you can do this in the OS X terminal:

newfs_msdos -F32 /dev/rdisk#s1

Make sure to check your partition ID's as rdisk#s1 might differ from your setup.

Restart your Mac and boot from the Windows CD by holding down the "C" key on startup. Install Windows as usualy on to your external drive. To boot in to Windows after installation hold down CMD+OPTION+SHIFT+DEL @ startup. You can also use a program such as refit as a "bootloader" of sorts which makes it a bit easier to start up in whichever OS you want to use. Just install your Boot Camp drivers from the CD and off you go!

Cheers mate.
 
FragTek said:
Yup you can run WinXP from an external disk, USB or FireWire. It's rather quite simple.

The first thing you need to do is format your 300gb drive as a FAT32 file systems (if you don't do this beforehand your drives & partitions may not show up correctly in the Windows installer), you can do this in the OS X terminal:

newfs_msdos -F32 /dev/rdisk#s1

Make sure to check your partition ID's as rdisk#s1 might differ from your setup.

Restart your Mac and boot from the Windows CD by holding down the "C" key on startup. Install Windows as usualy on to your external drive. To boot in to Windows after installation hold down CMD+OPTION+SHIFT+DEL @ startup. You can also use a program such as refit as a "bootloader" of sorts which makes it a bit easier to start up in whichever OS you want to use. Just install your Boot Camp drivers from the CD and off you go!

Cheers mate.
Click to expand...
I think I've seen you post before claiming to boot XP off of a Firewire drive. Why are you the only person on the Internet who can do this? USB has been done, but not firewire. What's your secret?
 
Harryc said:
I think I've seen you post before claiming to boot XP off of a Firewire drive. Why are you the only person on the Internet who can do this? USB has been done, but not firewire. What's your secret?
Click to expand...
And getting it to work with USB, requires tweaking the INF files on the install CD so that the USB driver stays loaded throughout the boot process.

It does depend heavily on the BIOS implementation though, since many PCs can boot off of USB media, by emulating internal devices...

B
 
FragTek said:
Yup you can run WinXP from an external disk, USB or FireWire. It's rather quite simple.

The first thing you need to do is format your 300gb drive as a FAT32 file systems (if you don't do this beforehand your drives & partitions may not show up correctly in the Windows installer), you can do this in the OS X terminal:

newfs_msdos -F32 /dev/rdisk#s1

Make sure to check your partition ID's as rdisk#s1 might differ from your setup.

Restart your Mac and boot from the Windows CD by holding down the "C" key on startup. Install Windows as usualy on to your external drive. To boot in to Windows after installation hold down CMD+OPTION+SHIFT+DEL @ startup. You can also use a program such as refit as a "bootloader" of sorts which makes it a bit easier to start up in whichever OS you want to use. Just install your Boot Camp drivers from the CD and off you go!

Cheers mate.
Click to expand...

Your lying! well i wont accuse you but NOONE else has been able to do it. I tried to follow your isntructions and it diddnt work.... What drive are you using; what computer exactly and what version windows?
 
ljump12 said:
Your lying! well i wont accuse you but NOONE else has been able to do it. I tried to follow your isntructions and it diddnt work.... What drive are you using; what computer exactly and what version windows?
Click to expand...

Maxter OneTouch III 300gb FW800
MacBook Pro 17"
Windows XP SP2

Works like a champ!

I may also add that I'm using reFit.
 
on a related subject:

anyone know when loading OS X on an external firewire as a boot, what will give better performance:
the external firewire on a 7200RPM Western Digital with an 8MB Cache, standard ATA drive vs. the internal 5400 RPM Mac Mini SATA drive.

Forgive me but I don't know that much about the advantage of SATA versus ATA, or how much you might lose through Firewire rather than the direct connection to the board.

Thanx.
 
roland.g said:
on a related subject:

anyone know when loading OS X on an external firewire as a boot, what will give better performance:
the external firewire on a 7200RPM Western Digital with an 8MB Cache, standard ATA drive vs. the internal 5400 RPM Mac Mini SATA drive.


Thanx.
Click to expand...

I compared read and write speeds of the 2.5inch seagate drive (5400rpm) in my mac mini to the read/write speeds of the 3.5inch 7200 rpm drive in the iMac. Happily, the figures agree with the specs that seagate themselves publish.

When my mini is out of warranty, I'm going to replace the 80GB 5400rpm drive with a 7200RPM 100GB drive. These newer 2.5inch drives are pretty much the same speed as the larger drives, plus, they have the advantage of NCQ (Native Command Queuing) and the SATA 1.5Gb/s transfer rate.

Summary: a like-for-like modern drive (that supports NCQ) will be quicker internally over SATA than plugged via *any* firewire connection.

I'm keen to try a RAID-1 set using SATA and Firewire tho.. my writes will be at the speed of the slowest drive (the firewire), but my reads should fly.
 
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