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What might be advantage of installing bootcamp on an external drive?
- Thread starter levmc
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Apple does not support installing Boot Camp on an external drive. Not sure if there is a work around somewhere to do it. However, you can always install virtual software on an external drive and run Windows from it that way.
This just saw this article that guides you how to install windows on external SSD: https://9to5mac.com/2020/07/14/install-windows-mac-external-ssd-drive-boot-camp-2020-video/
The first paragraph from the article you linked to explicitly calls out the arguably primary advantage to installing Boot Camp on an external drive:
It's your call.
I don't have an iMac. I have a Mac mini and I dumped my VirtualBox Windows instance several months ago in favor a standalone Windows notebook PC.
The person who wrote the article has to address a large audience of Mac users who have all sorts of various machines with different internal storage capacities and perhaps more importantly individual usage cases.
If you feel you have enough space on your internal SSD to allocate to Boot Camp, that configuration would have the best performance.
I don't have an iMac. I have a Mac mini and I dumped my VirtualBox Windows instance several months ago in favor a standalone Windows notebook PC.
The person who wrote the article has to address a large audience of Mac users who have all sorts of various machines with different internal storage capacities and perhaps more importantly individual usage cases.
If you feel you have enough space on your internal SSD to allocate to Boot Camp, that configuration would have the best performance.
I would guess so. After all, the guide just published is a revised version of a very similar 2017 guide that the author linked to. From a cursory glance the general methodology appears to be the same.
One would expect an external HDD to have mediocre performance as a Boot Camp Windows system drive.
One would expect an external HDD to have mediocre performance as a Boot Camp Windows system drive.
Booting modern operating systems is already slow enough. The last corporate job I worked at I had a Windows desktop PC, a Dell Optiplex from around 2010. It also had a 64 GB SSD as the boot drive.
I know around 2012 I had an Apple Authorized Service Center remove the 500 GB spinner from my home Mac mini 2010 and replace it with a 128 GB SSD. It was like a brand new computer.
I have periodically made backup clones of my Mac system drive onto external spinners and they were quite slow in booting up. But then again, those were emergency backup clones, not something I'd use on a regular basis.
Perhaps you are less critical than many others. You seem to ask a lot of questions that only you can really answer yourself.
If you really want to know, just do it yourself. After all, the end result needs to satisfy you, not random commenters in an anonymous Q&A forum.
I know around 2012 I had an Apple Authorized Service Center remove the 500 GB spinner from my home Mac mini 2010 and replace it with a 128 GB SSD. It was like a brand new computer.
I have periodically made backup clones of my Mac system drive onto external spinners and they were quite slow in booting up. But then again, those were emergency backup clones, not something I'd use on a regular basis.
Perhaps you are less critical than many others. You seem to ask a lot of questions that only you can really answer yourself.
If you really want to know, just do it yourself. After all, the end result needs to satisfy you, not random commenters in an anonymous Q&A forum.
Just timed it, took 9 seconds to boot to the Windows 10 desktop with a virtual machine on my 2018 i7 Mini running Parallels.
Is there a reason why you need bootcamp instead of a virtual machine? You don't need a separate drive or partition this way.
Just timed it, took 9 seconds to boot to the Windows 10 desktop with a virtual machine on my 2018 i7 Mini running Parallels.
Is there a reason why you need bootcamp instead of a virtual machine? You don't need a separate drive or partition this way.
Do you find that 16g is enough when using VMs? I only want to use windows for gaming while traveling.
I don't play games, so I don't know. I primarily use Windows to run GlobalMapper, a professional GIS application. I'm using a 16gb virtual machine in Parallels (which requires the Pro version, the regular version only supports 8gb VM's). My Mini has 64gb of RAM, and right now with GlobalMapper running on Windows and just Safari on MacOS it shows 27gb RAM in use. If you only have 16gb of RAM, could your game run in a 4gb VM? I am running MacOS Mountain Lion for some expensive legacy Mac software in a 4gb VM and it is much faster than the old Macs I used to have.
I decided to go with Parallels because I didn't want to permanetly allocate a chunk of disk space of Windows. IDK, with APFS, maybe that isn't a problem with filesystem "containers" that don't have fixed sizes? Anyway, there are other advantages with Parallels, since Windows can access any files on your Mac which means the VM does not need much dedicated disk space.
I'm really happy with performance, the VM is much faster than my 8-year-old "real" PC. I was using Parallels with Windows XP on my 2008 MacBook Pro at work and it was pretty slow and buggy back then. It has come a long way since then. But if you need the absolute best performance, I guess booting directly into Windows might be better.
I decided to go with Parallels because I didn't want to permanetly allocate a chunk of disk space of Windows. IDK, with APFS, maybe that isn't a problem with filesystem "containers" that don't have fixed sizes? Anyway, there are other advantages with Parallels, since Windows can access any files on your Mac which means the VM does not need much dedicated disk space.
I'm really happy with performance, the VM is much faster than my 8-year-old "real" PC. I was using Parallels with Windows XP on my 2008 MacBook Pro at work and it was pretty slow and buggy back then. It has come a long way since then. But if you need the absolute best performance, I guess booting directly into Windows might be better.
Windows external is for small Mac Book Pro space for a BootCamp partition! They even use a Mac Book Pro in their latest video:
Please forgive the n00b question but when running parallels or other VM software are the VMs running 24/7 by default or can you turn them on/off? Can you adjust their resources on the fly? I could probably make due with an 8gb VM but I wouldn't want it hogging half my RAM 24/7, only when I needed it. I'm obviously not well versed in this technology.
And on your last question, no I don't think the game will sit happily in at 4gb VM so I would need to upgrade my laptop and I'm probably not going to do that given ARM is relatively close. The game I care most about can run on Mojave so I will either split off a Mojave partition or something like the above for a bootcamp solution.
And on your last question, no I don't think the game will sit happily in at 4gb VM so I would need to upgrade my laptop and I'm probably not going to do that given ARM is relatively close. The game I care most about can run on Mojave so I will either split off a Mojave partition or something like the above for a bootcamp solution.
With BootCamp you are not running macOS and Windows concurrently. The technology lets you boot one or the other.
With VirtualBox and Parallels you run those virtual machines concurrently with macOS so yes, there is a hit to your system's RAM. However there is no requirement to run those 24x7. I have not tried VMware but I think it is similar to Parallels.
When I was running those, I normally quit out of all of the applications, fire up the VM, do whatever I needed to do, then quit the VM. Once you quit, there is nothing running in the background.
Some people need to run everything concurrently; they particularly benefit from more RAM. Moreover, these virtualization systems allow you to specifically allocate resources to the VM, like RAM or CPU cores but that has to be done prior to starting the VM, much like installing DIMMs or swapping out a CPU in a desktop PC. You can't adjust these resources on the fly.
If you are curious I suggest you try out VirtualBox since it is free. Parallels has better performance but it is subscription payware.
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FWIW, Parallels has a free trial.
kb.parallels.com
There are two versions, the desktop version is a $80 one-time purchase, the Pro version is a $100/year subscription. I got the Pro version because the desktop version is limited to 8gb and 2 cpu's. You may find discounts on these prices, they were having a 20% off sale when I purchased.
KB Parallels: Parallels Desktop for Mac trial period
kb.parallels.com
There are two versions, the desktop version is a $80 one-time purchase, the Pro version is a $100/year subscription. I got the Pro version because the desktop version is limited to 8gb and 2 cpu's. You may find discounts on these prices, they were having a 20% off sale when I purchased.
Most people now whom BootCamp now come from two camps, gamers or spend a large time using expensive programs! So many people is small NVMe or SSD in Macs are much smaller space now! Plus. With the charge in processors to their arm chips then BootCamp is going the way of the dinosaur!
What about it? People will still be able to use bootcamp or virtuals, in its present state, for years.
Edit: Obviously meant on current and to be released Intel Macs.
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Please explain how a Arm chip person could run BootCamp that’s desired on Intel Systems?
Not sure I understand your question... an ARM chip Mac couldn't run bootcamp or windows virtualization but anyone that has an intel mac could continue to use it for years.
Windows 10 benefits from an SSD. If you didn't configure your mac with a capacious enough SSD, you're probably going to need an external, which neither Windows nor Bootcamp officially support. Winclone is invaluable here, but there are hacks involving Windows to Go-- which technically requires a really expensive license.
I use Bootcamp to run a specialty CAD program, and a couple of games which either were never released for the mac (acquired from Good Old Games), or run so poorly on the mac as to invite desperate moves. Apple loves to deprecate libraries, and Microsoft loves to keep them around. I have some old hardware that won't run on the mac, but will on the PC (a really old, but really big graphics tablet, for instance)
I don't know if running a virtual environment will solve my performance issues, or let me use ancient hardware, though it would probably let me more easily exchange data-- windows can't see apple drives, and macos can't write to windows drives. I could probably buy third party drivers to enable this (the windows viruses probably have custom drivers by now, so arguments from the sandpoint of security are iffy). Right now thumb drives work nicely.
I use Bootcamp to run a specialty CAD program, and a couple of games which either were never released for the mac (acquired from Good Old Games), or run so poorly on the mac as to invite desperate moves. Apple loves to deprecate libraries, and Microsoft loves to keep them around. I have some old hardware that won't run on the mac, but will on the PC (a really old, but really big graphics tablet, for instance)
I don't know if running a virtual environment will solve my performance issues, or let me use ancient hardware, though it would probably let me more easily exchange data-- windows can't see apple drives, and macos can't write to windows drives. I could probably buy third party drivers to enable this (the windows viruses probably have custom drivers by now, so arguments from the sandpoint of security are iffy). Right now thumb drives work nicely.