{"id":508,"date":"2015-09-30T01:57:08","date_gmt":"2015-09-30T01:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mikelberman.com\/pgraff\/?p=508"},"modified":"2015-09-30T02:06:17","modified_gmt":"2015-09-30T02:06:17","slug":"installing-windows-on-a-thumb-drive-or-external-hard-drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikelberman.com\/pgraff\/installing-windows-on-a-thumb-drive-or-external-hard-drive\/","title":{"rendered":"Installing Windows on a Thumb Drive or External Hard Drive"},"content":{"rendered":"

Boot Windows On Your Mac From An External Hard Drive<\/a><\/p>\n

You need aUSB 3 or Thunderbolt thumb drive or external hard drive<\/p>\n

Slightly more difficult method that requires access to a PC running Windows to set up. Worse performance than Boot Camp, but better than most virtual machines. Requires you to restart your computer every time you want to run Windows, but doesn\u2019t take up space on your Mac\u2019s hard drive.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"windows-usb-booted\"<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t have a lot of free space on your Mac\u2019s hard drive<\/a>? It\u2019s also possible to boot a full version of Windows on your Mac from an external drive. You can use this disk on any Mac, and all of your installed Windows programs will come with you.<\/p>\n

The catch? You can\u2019t use Boot Camp to set the process up. I\u2019ve found a method that works, but it requires access to a PC running Windows. Ask a Windows-using friend nicely if need be \u2013 you\u2019ll only need the machine once.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll also need a free program called WinToUSB<\/a>, and a USB drive to install Windows onto. I used an old external hard drive, but if you have access to a flash drive bigger than 32 GB it should work. USB 3.0 is recommended.<\/p>\n

Setting Up<\/h3>\n

Plug your USB drive into the PC, then open the Disk Management utility. Right click the USB disk itself (making absolutely certain that it is your USB disk \u2013 you\u2019re about to delete all files on the drive).<\/p>\n

\"windows-convert-to-gpt\"<\/p>\n

If you see the option to \u201cConvert to GPT\u201d, click it. This will format the drive, but is necessary in order to create a drive that will boot on your Mac (or any UEFI-compatible device). If you see the option to \u201cConvert to MBR\u201d, don\u2019t click it: simply delete the partitions on the drive.<\/p>\n

Double-click the empty space on your newly empty drive and create a FAT32 partition \u2013 it doesn\u2019t need to be bigger than 100 MB \u2013 to serve as the boot sector. Next, create an NTFS partition for the remaining space \u2013 this is where Windows itself will be installed.<\/p>\n

\"windows-usb-partition\"<\/p>\n

Your external drive is now ready for WinToUSB, so fire that application up. You\u2019ll need to point it toward your Windows 8<\/a> install disk\/ISO, then to your USB drive. Assign the Boot and System partitions you created earlier.<\/p>\n

\"wintousb-partitions\"<\/p>\n

Click next, and WinToUSB will install Windows on your USB drive. When it\u2019s done, unmount the disk from the PC and plug it into your Mac. Shut your Mac down, if it\u2019s currently running, then turn it on while holding the Option key.<\/p>\n

\"windows-usb-boot\"<\/p>\n

You should see your USB drive as an bootable option \u2013 click it to continue, and Windows will start (though it may restart once or twice to complete the installation process). You\u2019ll have Windows running, but your WiFi and a number of other things won\u2019t work \u2013 you need drivers.<\/p>\n

Reboot your Mac to OS X and download the Boot Camp drivers<\/a>. You\u2019ll probably want to put them on another USB key, so you can access them from within Windows. Reboot into Windows, then run the installer.<\/p>\n

Eventually you\u2019ll have a full version of Windows running from USB, complete with Mac drivers. A huge advantage of this set up is you can run the same instance of Windows on any Mac, and all your programs will come with you.<\/p>\n

References<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.easyuefi.com\/wintousb\/<\/p>\n

https:\/\/discussions.apple.com\/thread\/5431182?start=30&tstart=0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boot Windows On Your Mac From An External Hard Drive You need aUSB 3 or Thunderbolt thumb drive or external hard drive Slightly more difficult method that requires access to a PC running Windows to set up. Worse performance than…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-templates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikelberman.com\/pgraff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikelberman.com\/pgraff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikelberman.com\/pgraff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikelberman.com\/pgraff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikelberman.com\/pgraff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mikelberman.com\/pgraff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":510,"href":"https:\/\/mikelberman.com\/pgraff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508\/revisions\/510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikelberman.com\/pgraff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikelberman.com\/pgraff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikelberman.com\/pgraff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}