Installing Windows 8.1 with BootCamp and I'm stuck, please help

Hi, I have downloaded Windows 8.1 to a 32 gig thumb drive. I have installed a second 32 Gig Thumb Drive so that I could install Windows there. When I, using BootCamp, click on the button that says "install windows 7 or later version", get the notice "the installer disk could not be found". How do I fix this?

Thanks in advance,

Mike

Windows will not install on a thumb drive because of the way Microsoft has designed Windows to avoid piracy and comply with its EULA. So, that's your first problem. The second problem might be that your Mac (which you told us nothing about) has a built in DVD drive which means the installer is looking there not the USB thumb drive. There are work arounds but we leave that up to you to find since we comply with the MS EULA in our forums.

Hello,

It is, in fact, possible to install windows on an external hard drive. I have done it using an external HDD. I did it with windows 10 but I am pretty sure it works the same with Windows 8.1. The guide I used can be found here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5431182?tstart=0. Look at the first reply with the 20 steps.

However, as chscag already said, windows are not meant to run on an external storage unit. Furthermore, even though you can install windows on a 32GB thumb drive, the storage left after the installation will be ~20GB, which in my opinion is not enough to do many things. Then, the connection between the drive and the mac should be fast (USB 3.0) or anything superior. Finally, as I said before, you are not supposed to run windows from the thumb drive, so expect a bunch of problems. In my case, the connection between the drive and the mac was not always stable, so sometimes the os just crashed, giving the 'INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE' error message.

TLR Yes, you can do it. No, I do not recommend it.

20 steps? Wow! Archmad that's almost as good as saying it can't be done.
As a user that has installed Windows 10 on a MBP using Boot Camp (I only have a few uses for it) I would suggest that if the need for Windows is essential it would be a whole lot simpler to buy a cheap Windows PC.
I have a 500Gb SSD so I can afford 100Gb to dedicate to a Windows partition but in my opinion any less is impractical.


Sent from my iPhone using Mac Forums

It also depends on your model (& year) of your Mac. Check here, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201457, to see if your model works with Windows 8.1. Also, if your Mac came with an optical drive, you will need a disc with Windows on it to install Windows.

In addition to what has been stated above (notwithstanding the work arounds), it may be easier to install Windows using a VM (Parallels, Fusion, or the free VirtualBox). Although a VM is not ideal for gaming, it certainly can suffice for running most Windows programs and is a lot easier to setup.