OFF TOPIC Can Bootcamp install XP on external disk???

R

Robster

Hunter
Hi

I am considering trying Bootcamp and was wondering if it would allow me to install onto either an external Firewire or USB hard disk???????

Cheers.

Robin
 
Bootcamp won't do this as Windows cannot boot from an external drive. Parallels will however due to it being an virtualtisation rather than windows running nativley.
 
namery said:
Bootcamp won't do this as Windows cannot boot from an external drive. Parallels will however due to it being an virtualtisation rather than windows running nativley.
Click to expand...

More of a Mac geek.

I don't know enough about Windows to know if this is a general case with any machine. Are you saying that no Windows Machine will boot off of say, any external USB2.0 Disk? I'm looking for a back up application that allows me to save a complete OS, Windows XP installation. How long has this been the situation? Aren't Win users upset at that lack of functionality? How do you get around this?

Pretty I've heard of backup and restore situation that allow you to boot a machine externally... :eek:
 
It would be nice if Windows would boot from an external device, but that would require a BIOS that would make the external device look like an internal one, and I've never seen one of those. Bootcamp must be installed on an internal drive. Once the OS is installed, you should be able to use external drives in the same way you can on other Windows boxes -- plug them in and they show up as drive letters. If you do this, the XP partition doesn't have to be any bigger than needed to install XP -- a few gig. You can force most software to install on drives other than C:, abd you can keep your data anywhere you like.
 
I actually tried this. First, Windows won't install on your external firewire HD. It has to be USB.
I was able to boot from a windows installation CD and choose the external HD, format it and install windows on it, although when I had to reboot to complete the installation, windows would start booting off the external HD (the logo showed) but it crashed at a acertain point with ablue screen. I tried that with Windows XP Professional SP2, which (I believe) is the latest OS yet released by Microsoft. Things may change in the future, though.
 
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