04-27-2009, 11:05 AM

Here's what I'd like to accomplish. I'd like to install windows on my external hard drive and be able to boot to it from my mac AND pc. Is this possible?

#1 - As I understand the general process, I'd have to be able to boot to an external hard drive from my mac - can anyone help me with this?

#2 - Assuming I am successful in #1, can anyone help me understand if I'd be able to boot to this hard drive from a pc? I know a lot of the drivers would be different, I'm wondering if there would be a way to flag which drivers to use based on the hardware configuration...(I don't even know if I'm asking the right question here.)

Now that I've asked my question, here's my situation - maybe there's a much better way to approach this. I do most of my work on my mac, but I have a pc at home and my office provides me with a pc. I'd like to be able to carry my "work files" around on a passport usb drive and be done with it, able to access/manipulate it from any mac/pc/linux "terminal" I want.

If it makes a difference, this is the mac I'm running

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook2,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.16 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MB21.00A5.B07
SMC Version: 1.17f0
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled

04-28-2009, 02:54 AM

I don't have an answer for your question, but you should take your serial number out of your spec list. Never list it publicly.

Looks like your mac was built towards the end of september 2007, you're out of warranty, and someone could use your serial number to fraud apple and you. ie, I could use your number to get a free battery out of apple under their macbook battery replacement program, for small starters. Though I never would.

Just a friendly heads up.

04-28-2009, 04:36 AM

I agree with dadsgravy re serial number. Keep it safe. I don't think you can still edit your post to delete it but perhaps one of the moderators can do it.

04-28-2009, 07:04 AM

Doh! Thanks, i had just copied/pasted that!

04-28-2009, 07:28 AM

Just get a USB flash drive or hard drive and keep your work files on it.

Hard drive will need to be formatted as FAT32 in order to use it with any OS.

Windows does not support booting from an external drive.
There are ways around this posted around the web and would be outside the MS EULA, so not discussable here. But, even if you can accomplish the feat on one machine, it is not going to boot across multiple machines.

If you want to load an OS on a hard drive and be able to boot it while attached to multiple machines, you'll need to move over to Linux.

04-29-2009, 11:46 AM

Ahh, gotcha. Well, thanks for the help guys! I've decided at this point to just format w/ fat32, and simply keep all my files organized on there for work, along with a few programs. At some point I'll probably get vm fusion on the mac, and just run all windows *crap* software for work related stuff.