Bootcamp w/o reinstalling XP

kirby14 · Nov 20, 2007

Is there a way I can take the HD out of my current XP box and place it in the Mac Pro and just setup bootcamp to load the drivers?

I would really prefer to not have to reinstall the entire thing when I already have a hard drive that is configured just fine.

Thanks!

Neo · Nov 20, 2007

(read: especially if I don't have my XP CD!)

You want to put your XP HD in your MBP? I don't think there's room for it. And how would you put OS X on that drive? You could put your old drive in an external enclosure...

Bootcamp creates a partition for Windows. Not on external drives, to the best of my knowledge. Since an external can be disconnected, that's a liability when the computer boots.

You could conceivably run a virtual machine (via Parallels or Fusion) on an external drive, but I haven't read anything on that either.

To sum up, signs point to "No," but good luck!

kirby14 · Nov 20, 2007

Neo said:
(read: especially if I don't have my XP CD!)

You want to put your XP HD in your MBP? I don't think there's room for it. And how would you put OS X on that drive? You could put your old drive in an external enclosure...

Bootcamp creates a partition for Windows. Not on external drives, to the best of my knowledge. Since an external can be disconnected, that's a liability when the computer boots.

You could conceivably run a virtual machine (via Parallels or Fusion) on an external drive, but I haven't read anything on that either.

To sum up, signs point to "No," but good luck!

Take out the B in MBP and it might make a little more sense

It's a Mac Pro (workstation, not laptop) so it would be an internal drive. I haven't seen a post on the net where anyone even asks the question, so I have a feeling I'm in uncharted territory.

bobtomay · Nov 20, 2007

No. You can't really even do that in the windows realm. Take a hard drive out of one machine and put it in another with a different motherboard, chipset, video card, etc. Over 90% of the time it would not even boot.

kirby14 · Nov 20, 2007

bobtomay said:
No. You can't really even do that in the windows realm. Take a hard drive out of one machine and put it in another with a different motherboard, chipset, video card, etc. Over 90% of the time it would not even boot.

True, but usually if you remove all devices from device manager and reset the HAL before you remove the drive from the original machine you can place it in the second machine and it will redetect hardware. I would be willing to give this a shot if I knew if I could enable bootcamp without actually installing windows.

bobtomay · Nov 20, 2007

Bootcamp does not load the drivers in windows.

The beta's of Bootcamp created a CD with the windows drivers which you then used in windows to install the drivers.

With Leopard, all Bootcamp basically does is create the partition on which you would install windows. The drivers for windows are located on the Leopard disk.

And since I do not have a Mac Pro, nor any experience with one, I am unable to answer as to whether you would be able to boot from a secondary HD.

kirby14 · Nov 20, 2007

Ok, I guess I'll just give it a shot and see what I get. Thanks!