Bootcamp uses a 20GB minimum and we don’t want to lose that much space.Ģ) Install Windows on external Thunderbolt drive.ġ) Create a FAT formatted partition within your MBP internal disk. It should go without saying, but make sure you have backed up your entire system before you proceed.ġ) Resize your internal drive partition to make room for windows boot files WITHOUT using Bootcamp.
If you can tie your shoes and you can read, you can probably run Windows off an external Thunderbolt drive.Ī SUMMARY OF THE STEPS (so you know what you’re getting into) This guide is fairly detailed and only requires that you can follow a series of specific steps. This frees up your internal drive for all your Macintosh computing needs, while also enabling a large external disk on which to place a robust Windows install. You could just as easily use an external hard drive (instead of a solid-state drive) if you prefer a lower cost/GB. Instead of installing Windows on a separate partition within an internal storage disk, you can opt to buy an external Thunderbolt solid-state drive on which to place the Windows OS. This is not hard to do, if you don’t mind the Windows partition taking up space on your disk drive -or- if you are willing to deal with the performance degradation from using the virtual machines: Parallels or VMware. Perhaps you want or need to install Windows on your Retina Macbook Pro. Guide: create external Windows 7 boot drive for Macbook It will work if you follow each step iteratively. The link above is formatted more nicely, but I have pasted the text below.
It will work for any Mac, but especially with retina and air users who are having trouble getting other methods to work.
BEFORE running the install, you need to enter CMD within the install utility to "flag" the external hard drive as active and bootable. Then you can run the Windows install from an external USB. The key to getting the whole thing to work is to run part of bootcamp - the one which creates a Windows partition - but (and here's the key) to make that partition on your internal hard drive VERY small (<1GB). Answers without enough detail may be edited or deleted. Want to improve this post? Provide detailed answers to this question, including citations and an explanation of why your answer is correct.
0 kommentar(er)
