cloning a bootcamp partition from external usb to external ssd or T2 drive

Hello,

I had an iMac (Late 2009 27" 2.66GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor, OS10.8) that died, but the internal drive was saved and is working fine. The drive was partitioned and was used as a dual boot machine that had Windows 7 installed. I now have that drive in an external USB 2 enclosure. I bought a new iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch Intel Core i7, Late 2015, OS 10.11.2), which is a SSD and is not partitioned. I want to be able to run windows, and I am considering 2 options:

Option 1: Getting a dedicated external SSD drive to run Windows

Option 2: Getting a T2 external drive and partition it to have a Mac and a Windows sector

My first question- Which option will work better ( I run demanding 3D software, i.e. 3D Max, on the windows side), or is there a difference?

My second question- Is it possible for me to clone my bootcamp partition that was working on my old drive to one of the new options? If so, is there a good (hopefully easy) way to do this? Or should I be doing a clean install?

I've been reading a lot of conflicting information about all this and I'm trying to find a solution that will work.

Thanks in advance for any help!

G'day and welcome to the forums.

I think you may be in for a new version of Windows as all forms of 7 are too old to install on your new iMac. Does Windows 7 run when the old drive is connected via a caddy and USB3? If so I would make do with that.

The BootCamp software included with the 2015 iMac isn't going to work with Win 7. It certainly didn't for me. I think Win 7 works in virtual machines but that may not be the best option for the software you are running. Others who set up BootCamp more often than I do can confirm this but I don't think Windows will run on an external drive (unless it is win a virtual machine). You can thank Microsoft for that one.

thanks all for the replies, much appreciated