Windows not booting when TB drive is connected.

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I have been running W7 pro next to OSX for quite a while. OSX = 10.10.1, W7 has been freshly installed per Apple instructions.

A few days ago I bought an OWC Mercury Pro Elite Dual, a dual bay TB/USB 3 enclosure. My iMac has TB, no USB 3, with TB I would get proper read/write speeds, I hoped.

But I ran into trouble: what works very well without, does not work at all with the Elite: with the latter connected via Thunderbolt, W7 does not boot. All I get at boot-up is a black screen and a blinking cursor.

When I disconnect the TB cable, both OSX and W7 boot just fine, as they always have. Either by Option-key at startup, or by selecting the start-up disk in OSX. Connect the Elite via TB, everything shows, but only OSX boots. I tried every combo of settings, no go.

I also have a DeLock 2.5" TB enclosure, and this works fine. So it's the Elite, not the mac...

Anyone here familiar with this OWC drive, and can help me out? I do not need windows that often, but when I do, I really do. I would like to get my $600 (box + drives) investment up and running...
 

chscag

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I'm going to take a guess here and say that the reason Windows 7 won't boot is because it "sees" the TB and doesn't know what to do with it. No driver. What happens when you boot Windows 7 first and then attach the TB? Also, since Mac Sales (OWC) has a great tech support and 800 toll free line, I'd give them a call and see if they might have a solution you can try. Let us know how it turns out.
 
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Chscag;

I am in the Netherlands, purchased from their reseller in Belgium. But OWC has chat-support, so I contacted them. Friendly people. Question: Bootcamp and TB... how come no boot W7? Answer: won't work. Question: Why not? Answer: only works with USB.

They may be right, but since they could not tell me why, I am not giving up yet. There are many ways to skin a cat, and I have seen more solutions to problems that at first seemed unsolvable. Besides, I have about $500 in it.... :-(

I do have another TB enclosure, a DeLock 2.5", that I equipped with an SSD to run OSX. Get speeds 3 to 4 times faster then the internal HDD, and W7 will boot without a hitch! I managed to get Windows 7 Pro running from an external SSD using this enclosure. Apple says it's not supported, but it can be done.

My intention was to put the OSX SSD + 3 TB HDD in the Elite, and the W7 SSD in the DeLock. Checked the specs of the Elite, but that the drive @ TB would disable Bootcamp must have escaped me.

Oh, and the Elite is not hot-pluggable. It start/stops when the computer starts/stops.

If there is one thing I really hate about my (2011) iMac, it's that Apple decided to go Thunderbolt at the expense of USB 3... the latter would have saved me lots of time and money.
 
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Well, I am back. Spent de last two days on the Dark Side, in a galaxy far, far away...

I tried all kinds of Windows installations, with/without Bootcamp, efi boot, MBR, GPT, etc. etc. etc. Many, many reboots. So many, that if I was given a dollar for every time I heard the start-uo boing, I could have bought a new iMac Retina....

Alas, no avail! I could not find a solution that allowed to run Windows with the Elite Pro Dual (EPD) connected via TB.

So I went with a $5 solution: I bought a switched plug/socket. A small housing with a mains plug on one side, a socket on the other and an illuminated switch to turn it off and on. Placed it close at hand on my desk. The EPD is plugged into that box.

Now if I want to start up in Windows, I turn of the computer, flip the switch to OFF, restart, keep Option key pressed and select Windows from the boot options. Windows then boots from the external TB SSD, and because the EPD is turned off that works.

For OSX, I flip the switch to ON, and boot OSX from the SSD in the EPD.

I do not have to switch 10 times a day, just occasionally, and most time I am at OSX, so this is not too bad a solution. At least, I have both W7 and OSX running from SSD's, and that was the main objective.

So this cat has been skinned at last, albeit with a dull knife.

Hope this can be of use to any prospective EPD buyers...

Thymen
 

chscag

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Unique and clever solution. Thanks for posting back and letting us know. :)
 

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