Bootcamp: Save yourself possibly hours of time:

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1. Yes, this works for an external drive - otherwise a SuperDuper! bootable backup wouldn't be nearly as worthwhile.

2. No, this will not work for Windows. Windows will not boot from an external. This is a limitation of Windows.

Hello, I don't mean for my very first post to be a argument post, or to be portrayed as "that guy" but it is VERY possible to boot from an external drive whether hard drive, cd drive, what have you. All you need to do is change your boot sequence in BIOS, and it will run fine. :)
 
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Hello, I don't mean for my very first post to be a argument post, or to be portrayed as "that guy" but it is VERY possible to boot from an external drive whether hard drive, cd drive, what have you. All you need to do is change your boot sequence in BIOS, and it will run fine. :)

I don't mean to be "that" guy either, but since when do Mac's have a BIOS?
 
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Hello, I don't mean for my very first post to be a argument post, or to be portrayed as "that guy" but it is VERY possible to boot from an external drive whether hard drive, cd drive, what have you. All you need to do is change your boot sequence in BIOS, and it will run fine. :)

Aside from not having a BIOS, I never said that it is not possible to boot from a hard drive, cd drive, what have you.

I clearly affirmed that you can boot OS X from an external drive.

I stated you could not boot Windows from an external drive due to a limitation of Windows itself.

While there may be hacks/haxies you can find out there on the vast interwebz to do this, it is neither easy to implement, nor does it work for everyone.

Not only that, it would also be outside any discussion allowed here, since we abide by U.S. law including the EULAs of the software developers and agreed to when you install their software.
 
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hi gang a quick bit of help needed. Basically got a macbook with 320g hard drive. I had windows xp pro installed using half of my hard drive. Now that i've messed around with the mac for a month i'm making a permanent switch to mac :). Now ive gone into bootcamp and it has the option to remove my xp part and use all the memory for mac os, but it says its only 296g of memory. so where has the 24g gone. I understand that the actually os system uses some of it but isn't 24g a bit much.....am i missing something. By the way I havent deleted xp from the system just had a quick look at how to do it.
 
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Upgrade to Snow Leopard and you'll get your whole 320 GB.
 
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:D Wow quick reply. sorry cant afford snow leopard yet,as i just got a 24" imac at work :D and just got my self this macbook second hand a month ago, so broke:'( .
So if I remove the xp partition 296g is correct then. and do I need any disks for the leopard thats already on my laptop.
 
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Yep, that's correct and no, shouldn't require any discs just to restore it to a single volume with BootCamp Assistant.
 

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Now ive gone into bootcamp and it has the option to remove my xp part and use all the memory for mac os, but it says its only 296g of memory. so where has the 24g gone. I understand that the actually os system uses some of it but isn't 24g a bit much.....am i missing something.
It's how a hard drive size is calculated. Most operating systems including OS X pre-10.6 measure(d) hard drive size using base-2 notation. In other words, a MB was equal to 1024 KB and a GB was equal to 1024 MB and so on. When you buy a hard drive from a store, the size is measured in base-10 notation meaning that a MB equals 1000 KB and a GB equals 1000 MB. So, under Leopard, the hard drive size is calculated as being ~298 GB because the size is "converted" from base-10 to base-2. If you use the calculator here, it will show you that a base-10 HD size of 320 GB is 298.02GB is base-2 notation.

Starting with Snow Leopard, OS X measures hard drive sizes with base-10 notation, much like manufacturers do. So, my 320GB HD is now reported as 319.73GB.
 
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Guys thanks for the help. By the way I didnt realise snow leopard upgrade was only £25 here in the U.K. I'll prob order one this week.
But thank you for quick replies and help.
I'm about to erase my xp partition and will be back to report.
 
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Ok it took like 2 seconds to delete th xp partition....Is that normal. And do I have to do some kind of disk clean up like I used to do on xp.?
 

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Ok it took like 2 seconds to delete th xp partition....Is that normal. And do I have to do some kind of disk clean up like I used to do on xp.?

Yes on the first question, no on the second.
 
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More help needed.

I think I have gone the long way around getting this far however i have to go down this road now!!!

So while running bootcamp it says it is unable to create partition and to back up and erase the hd. I did this with time machine and rebooted using the install disc.

Now should i restore from time machine before reinstalling osx?

I am thinking i should reinstal osx then run bootcamp and then when all is well restore all of my files from time machine??

Thanks in advance!!
 
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More help needed.
...

I am thinking i should reinstal osx then run bootcamp and then when all is well restore all of my files from time machine??

Thanks in advance!!

That sounds like a plan.
 
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Help! I need to put windows xp, on my mbp for college. It has snow leapord on it atm. Im jsut wondering how much space do i need to make on the hardrive for it, and will the wireless internet work like normal in windows? please help!
 
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Print out the Apple Boot Camp installation Guide and read then, then keep it handy during the install. How much space you need depends on what you are putting on but very few people need over 32 GB. most get by with much less. Would not go under 10, IMO. After installing it, boot into Windows and then insert your Snow Leopard install disk - it will install all the drivers (including wireless).

Don't forget you'll need a full retail copy or "OEM System Builders" version of XP SP2 or later, on a single disk, for the install to work.

Good luck!
 
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Ok thanks a million sammy. So I put the snow leopard CD in when i have windows running??
 
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Boot camp

What CD do i need if want to get windows vista on my macbook as there are lots of them on the web but i don't know which is the right one!!
 

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What CD do i need if want to get windows vista on my macbook as there are lots of them on the web but i don't know which is the right one!!

Not sure that I would recommend buying Vista at the moment with Windows 7 coming out in a couple of weeks.
 

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