05-24-2007, 12:11 PM

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So i got my 120gb 2.5'' 5600rpm extermal harddrive today (after waiting three weeks, stupid eBay seller).

Now i had a great idea to swap the harddrive in my Macbook with the one in the external case, however, when i took the harddrive out the Macbook, its SATA and my external is IDE (or the other way around, i can't remember).

So i now am moving onto a different question. I have Vista installed on my Macbook with Bootcamp because my parents + family members and some freinds don't know how to use OSx, so i let them use Vista.

I have like 10gb left on my Macbook, so i was thinking, can i delete the 15gb Vista partion from my Harddrive and partion the external harddrive with a 20gb partion then install Vista on that.

I'm not sure if Macbooks can boot from external harddrives, but from what i found on the web, they can.

I just want to know if you can before i start deleting Vista.
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05-25-2007, 02:29 PM

TechTool Protogo lets you make any usb device bootable I like it so when I need to defrag my hard drive. I would really go with firewire boot rather than usb. I have had better experience with firewire. TechTool Protogo is 135 dollars.

05-25-2007, 08:18 PM

Originally Posted by Hustle

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So i got my 120gb 2.5'' 5600rpm extermal harddrive today (after waiting three weeks, stupid eBay seller).

Now i had a great idea to swap the harddrive in my Macbook with the one in the external case, however, when i took the harddrive out the Macbook, its SATA and my external is IDE (or the other way around, i can't remember).

So i now am moving onto a different question. I have Vista installed on my Macbook with Bootcamp because my parents + family members and some freinds don't know how to use OSx, so i let them use Vista.

I have like 10gb left on my Macbook, so i was thinking, can i delete the 15gb Vista partion from my Harddrive and partion the external harddrive with a 20gb partion then install Vista on that.

I'm not sure if Macbooks can boot from external harddrives, but from what i found on the web, they can.

I just want to know if you can before i start deleting Vista.
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They sure can and its really easy and as easy as pushing a button.

1st. make a clone of your InHD using a free app like superduper
2nd. Make sure you make your clone in "Bootable Copy" mode
3rd. Shutdown.
4th. Plug in your ExHD
5th. Bootup and hold down the ole' "option" key
6th your screen should come up with an option for you at this point. You'll have the choice of booting into your InHD or your ExHD click on which ever one you wish to run from.

After rereading your post I'm not sure if thats really your goal. You should be able to delete your partition with bootcamp assistant. Either way theres easy directions on how to boot frm your ExHD

05-25-2007, 08:30 PM

Whilst you can boot OS X off of an external drive, Boot Camp currently only supports booting off of internal drives.

So you'd have to stick with the internal partition if you want to run vista. Alternatively you could look into a virtualisation solution to run vista under OS X. You can then store the virtual machine on any drive.

05-26-2007, 07:01 AM

I use rEFIt to boot from external drives. It's a nice little graphical interface at EFI level. Plus you can add your own banners and icons to customize the boot sequence.

05-28-2007, 06:54 AM

Originally Posted by Aptmunich

Whilst you can boot OS X off of an external drive, Boot Camp currently only supports booting off of internal drives.

So you'd have to stick with the internal partition if you want to run vista. Alternatively you could look into a virtualisation solution to run vista under OS X. You can then store the virtual machine on any drive.

True - I tried (and failed) last week to use an external hardrive for Bootcamp & XP Pro.

No problem with OS X on a USB2 or Firewire drive (I use both).