Hello, I am wondering whether it is possible to install and boot windows 10 preview from an external hard drive? The external hard drive is running Yosemite. You can boot OSX from an external so I though maybe bootcamp might work too. However from my attempts it seems an internal drive may be necessary?
Create Windows 10 USB Installer Drive On Mac. Creating Windows 10 USB installer drive on Mac is pretty easy and straightforward. To start off, head over to Microsoft and download the official Windows ISO. While selecting the OS from the dropdown menu, just select 'Windows 10' and click on the 'Confirm' button. Don't bother with all those K and N stuff.
When I boot into Yosemite external and use bootcamp assistant it says there is not enough free space on the startup disk. Yosemite external has plenty free space but the internal drive does not so I can not progress.
Click to expand.I've never had a problem booting from external drives, USB and Firewire, using either Windows 8.1 or 10 Technical Preview. I also have not had any problem installing from ISO file to any USB drive (external SSD) using transportable wintousb with it's wintogo limitations (can't see internal drives, etc.). I currently have both Win 10 and Win 8.1 running from bootable SSD's in cheap USB3 enclosures (with UASP protocol they are FAST) with no problems booting with either the Option key boot or selecting as Startup drive from System Preference on my MBA and Mini. I've never had a problem booting from external drives, USB and Firewire, using either Windows 8.1 or 10 Technical Preview. Even USB drives work fine using a windows clone (free EaseUS Partition Master) of the bootcamp drive. I also have not had any problem installing from ISO file to any USB drive (external SSD) using transportable wintousb with it's wintogo limitations (can't see internal drives, etc.). I currently have both Win 10 and Win 8.1 running from bootable SSD's in cheap USB3 enclosures (with UASP protocol they are FAST) with no problems booting with either the Option key boot or selecting as Startup drive from System Preference on my MBA and Mini.
Click to expand.Thanks for the helpful replies. I have had a look at WintoGo and read all instructions. However I am wondering. If I was to clone a bootcamp drive or install windows using WintoGo is there any preparation I need to do with the external hard drive? For example is it possible to clone and boot windows onto an external hard drive which is formatted and partitioned as Mac OS Journaled Guide Partition Table?
Or should it be formatted as something else? I am hoping to install windows onto a separate partition of the external drive which also contains a bootable Mac OSX partition. Thanks for the helpful replies. I have had a look at WintoGo and read all instructions.
However I am wondering. If I was to clone a bootcamp drive or install windows using WintoGo is there any preparation I need to do with the external hard drive? For example is it possible to clone and boot windows onto an external hard drive which is formatted and partitioned as Mac OS Journaled Guide Partition Table? Or should it be formatted as something else? I am hoping to install windows onto a separate partition on external drive which also contains bootable Mac OSX.
Click to expand.The windows partition will have to be NTFS. It can be done but there are several ways to do what you want and it will be time consuming, error prone, and the steps will be different depending on what hardware you have, the programs you use to do partitioning, cloning, and OS ISO's.
Look at Wintousb vice Wintogo! Wintousb is really easy to use, particularly with Windows 10 since there is a universal OS activation key good until about next spring. Otherwise the Windows OS will need reactivation any time you use it on a different computer. One way to do it on an external drive would be to simply use Carbon Copy Clone to clone your OSX to a larger drive. Then option boot to that drive and partition it using OSX Drive Utilities with an exfat partition.
Next plug the drive into a Windows machine, the exfat partition will show up, format it NTFS, download the Win10 Technical Preview ISO (noting the activation code), run Wintousb select the ISO, and simply select the same NFTS partition as system and boot. Problems not knowing the hardware available to you, will include whether the drive will be MBR or GPT (GUID) partitioned and whether your motherboard supports UEFI.
For me, with a desktop running Windows 8.1, a Mac Mini running Yosemite, a SSD with USB3 enclosure, Carbon Copy on the MAC, Win 10 ISO on the Win desktop as well as free Wintousb, Apple's bootcamp driver folder, and free EaseUS partitioning program, it was easy and quick. I have a Bootable SSD USB3 250GB with Windows 10 to play with on my MBA, Mac Mini, and Windows Desktop. Doing it all on a MAC would also be doable but would require a working Windows Bootcamp and a lot of 'option' key booting.
The windows partition will have to be NTFS. It can be done but there are several ways to do what you want and it will be time consuming, error prone, and the steps will be different depending on what hardware you have, the programs you use to do partitioning, cloning, and OS ISO's. Look at Wintousb vice Wintogo! Wintousb is really easy to use, particularly with Windows 10 since there is a universal OS activation key good until about next spring. Otherwise the Windows OS will need reactivation any time you use it on a different computer. One way to do it on an external drive would be to simply use Carbon Copy Clone to clone your OSX to a larger drive. Then option boot to that drive and partition it using OSX Drive Utilities with an exfat partition.
![Windows Windows](http://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/find-disk-identifier-diskutil-mac-osx.jpg)
Next plug the drive into a Windows machine, the exfat partition will show up, format it NTFS, download the Win10 Technical Preview ISO (noting the activation code), run Wintousb select the ISO, and simply select the same NFTS partition as system and boot. Problems not knowing the hardware available to you, will include whether the drive will be MBR or GPT (GUID) partitioned and whether your motherboard supports UEFI. For me, with a desktop running Windows 8.1, a Mac Mini running Yosemite, a SSD with USB3 enclosure, Carbon Copy on the MAC, Win 10 ISO on the Win desktop as well as free Wintousb, Apple's bootcamp driver folder, and free EaseUS partitioning program, it was easy and quick.
I have a Bootable SSD USB3 250GB with Windows 10 to play with on my MBA, Mac Mini, and Windows Desktop. Doing it all on a MAC would also be doable but would require a working Windows Bootcamp and a lot of 'option' key booting. The windows partition will have to be NTFS.
It can be done but there are several ways to do what you want and it will be time consuming, error prone, and the steps will be different depending on what hardware you have, the programs you use to do partitioning, cloning, and OS ISO's. Look at Wintousb vice Wintogo!
Wintousb is really easy to use, particularly with Windows 10 since there is a universal OS activation key good until about next spring. Otherwise the Windows OS will need reactivation any time you use it on a different computer. One way to do it on an external drive would be to simply use Carbon Copy Clone to clone your OSX to a larger drive. Then option boot to that drive and partition it using OSX Drive Utilities with an exfat partition. Next plug the drive into a Windows machine, the exfat partition will show up, format it NTFS, download the Win10 Technical Preview ISO (noting the activation code), run Wintousb select the ISO, and simply select the same NFTS partition as system and boot. Problems not knowing the hardware available to you, will include whether the drive will be MBR or GPT (GUID) partitioned and whether your motherboard supports UEFI.
For me, with a desktop running Windows 8.1, a Mac Mini running Yosemite, a SSD with USB3 enclosure, Carbon Copy on the MAC, Win 10 ISO on the Win desktop as well as free Wintousb, Apple's bootcamp driver folder, and free EaseUS partitioning program, it was easy and quick. I have a Bootable SSD USB3 250GB with Windows 10 to play with on my MBA, Mac Mini, and Windows Desktop. Doing it all on a MAC would also be doable but would require a working Windows Bootcamp and a lot of 'option' key booting. Click to expand.I've created windows to go 8 and windows to go 2012 server using manual commands (imagex).
I am not able to boot on my mac pro (early 2011) with bootcamp windows 7 installed. I know windows to go drives are fine as I am able to boot on other PC's and Mac's. Is there a trick to get it working on my mac? Using Option during boot doesn't detect windows to go drives.
I have tried refit and refind, though when I select windows usb drive the screen goes black with '-' flashing. WinPE (fat32) is detected using Options and boots just fine on my mac. Click to expand.I told you how I set up Windows to run on a Mac external USB SSD drive using WintoUSB. The only thing I use EaseUS for was re-sizing and getting rid of partitions after I had Windows 10 running (WintoUSB) on the USB SSD; I have used it also to Disk copy after I had Windows running. I've never used Bootcamp within OSX to set up the drives; so I've NEVER had a Bootcamp partition running on an internal drive. I only use the Bootcamp drivers on the external after I have a working Windows drive / partition. I told you how I set up Windows to run on a Mac external USB SSD drive using WintoUSB.
The only thing I use EaseUS for was re-sizing and getting rid of partitions after I had Windows 10 running (WintoUSB) on the USB SSD; I have used it also to Disk copy after I had Windows running. I've never used Bootcamp within OSX to set up the drives; so I've NEVER had a Bootcamp partition running on an internal drive. I only use the Bootcamp drivers on the external after I have a working Windows drive / partition. Click to expand.OK, just took an external USB3 250GB SSD, formatted it NTFS 4K Sectors, ran WintoUSB. Selected Win 10 ISO build 9879, selected the SSD drive, it went right to the select boot and sysetms partitions (I selected the same partition), it went right to installing. 4 minutes later I copied Bootcamp 5.1.5621 to the drive.
I then plugged it into my Mac Mini and booted right into Win 10, I then ran the Bootcamp setup for drivers and was done. Just plugged the same drive into my MBA, 'option' booted right into Windows 10 Build 9879, ran setup for Bootcamp 5.1.5640, everything is great, couldn't be simpler, Windows 10 runs on my Mini and MBA from a fast external SSB drive. Click to expand.I have looked into creating a Windows 2 Go installation to see if I can even get that working. Using Aomei Partition Assistant I attempted a Win2go install and came up with the error that the sector sizes of my Bootcamp partition and external disk did not match.
So it's a similar error as WintoUSB. That has got me thinking. How can I find the sector size on my Bootcamp partition, can I modify it with data intact, if I make a larger Bootcamp partition will it alter the sector sizes and what size would it have to be for 4k?
My external drive is 4Gb in size. I have looked into creating a Windows 2 Go installation to see if I can even get that working. Using Aomei Partition Assistant I attempted a Win2go install and came up with the error that the sector sizes of my Bootcamp partition and external disk did not match. So it's a similar error as WintoUSB. That has got me thinking.
How can I find the sector size on my Bootcamp partition, can I modify it with data intact, if I make a larger Bootcamp partition will it alter the sector sizes and what size would it have to be for 4k? My external drive is 4Gb in size. Click to expand.Trying to move a Bootcamp partition to a bootable external drive. I thought I would give Win2go to see what it would do. I might be onto something with the sector sizes. I have been looking at all sorts of different programs to get this working and I stumbled across this:- I think a step forward might be to get the sector sizes to match, but I'm not sure that is possible.
The Bootcamp partition is set at 512. My 4TB drive cannot be formatted at 512 (I tried manually overriding via FORMAT command), error message says it is not supported. So my only option is to somehow specify the size on the Bootcamp partition as 4k.
Once you install Yosemite, the file will automatically erase itself, so it's important to make a bootable drive first. If you want to install first and then make a bootable drive, make a copy of the installer app in another location so you can access it later. Worst case scenario is downloading the large file again from the Mac App Store, but then why make a bootable drive? The Easiest Way: Use DiskMaker X By far the easiest way to create a bootable drive is to use the DiskMaker X application, which automates the entire process in the next method. To start out, download the newest version of DiskMaker X from. Currently, that's the. (Update: the public Yosemite version is out now, and you can download it from, or.) Once download, open it up and select 'Yosemite Beta' or 'Yosemite 10.10' (depending on the version you're using) to start the process.
Then just follow the rest of the prompts to start the disk-making process. It could take anywhere from 15 minutes to to 45 minutes to finish, depending on your USB flash drive.
If it's more toward the latter, you might get a ' error, but it should still work, (it worked for me). The Less Easy Way: Format & Use Terminal If you're more comfortable with Terminal commands, this is the method for you. Just make sure your USB drive is already formatted correctly before proceeding. To see how to correctly format your USB drive, please see Step #1 below in the 'The Hardest Way' section. With your USB drive ready to go, open up Terminal and type (or copy/paste) the following command. sudo /Applications/Install OS X Yosemite.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia -volume /Volumes/Yosemite -applicationpath /Applications/Install OS X Yosemite.app -nointeraction Note that you should replace the 'Yosemite' in 'Volumes/Yosemite' with whatever you named your USB drive.
This should all be one line. After you get it in there, just hit the Enter key. Type in your admin password to continue and the Enter again. (You won't visibly see your password typing, but it's happening—believe me.) Now just wait. This could be fairly quickly or very long, depending on your system and USB drive. The Hardest Way: Do Everything Manually If you don't want to use DiskMaker X or Terminal commands, this is another option for you. It's a lot more complicated, but gets the job done.
Step 1: Reformat Your USB Drive First, make sure you have a USB flash drive that's at least 8 GBs in size, then mount it. Open up Disk Utility and do the following. Select the USB drive (not the partition).
Go to the Partition tab. Change the 'Partition Layout' to 1 Partition. Rename it Yosemite (or whatever you want). Select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the 'Format'. Click the Options. After your Finder reloads, the hidden files you once saw before should now be gone.
Go ahead and close all of your windows, exit Terminal and Disk Utility, and eject your mounted disks to clean up your mess. Installing Yosemite on Your Computer Now, it's time to test out your new drive.
Restart your computer while holding the Option (Alt) key on your keyboard. Wait until the Startup Manager pops up, then select your new OS X Base System volume (or whatever your bootable drive is called). Alternatively, you can just hold down the C button while starting up to boot directly into the USB drive.
Troubleshooting Tips If the installation of Yosemite freezes, it's probably because your USB drive is corrupted in some way. This happened to me on the first couple tries, where it would freeze at 5 minutes left. The third USB stick I used was successful, and it took less than 15 minutes for Yosemite to boot up. If you're getting an Undefined error: 0 warning when trying to install, this more than likely means that you forgot to perform Step 6 above, so make sure to copy over those two BaseSystem files.
If you got the 'AppleEvent timed out' error using DiskMaker X, more than likely it'll still work. Just eject the new drive and use it. If it doesn't work, try one of the other methods out to start over. If you're not sure if you're going to like Yosemite over Mavericks, I would suggest and installing Yosemite there, that way if anything goes wrong, your Mavericks installation will still be untouched. Cover image via Related. Talk about the long way of achieving this!
Very thorough tutorial but unnecessary. Assuming you have downloaded the BETA version of Yosemite, open up the installer from the Application folder, but do not proceed with the installer, just leave it open. Then follow step 1 as per this tutorial. Once your USB drive has been formatted add copy and paste the following into Terminal: sudo /Applications/Install OS X Yosemite Beta.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia -volume /Volumes/UNTITLED -applicationpath /Applications/Install OS X Yosemite Beta.app -nointeraction Where UNTITLED is the name of your formatted volums/USB drive e.g. Wait (a while, no really, you'll be waiting quite some time if you're not using USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt) and then you'll be ready to boot and clean install Yosemite BETA from your USB drive. Carry on from Step 8. No need for lengthy process of hiding.unhiding files.folders nor is there a need to drag and drop files/folders.
Don't forget to backup! Great tutorial and thanks for your hard work and for your generosity! I did the usb installation, i installed on the hard drive and when i tried to boot from hdd the boot process stops and the computer reboots. I used the flags: -s -x -f -v kext-dev-mode=1 KernelCache=No. I have a emachines E725, dual core T4400, 3 GB Ram, 320GB HDD, integrated graphic card Intel GM45, i don't know the type of the motherboard of this machines with windows 7, xubuntu 14.04 and mavericks 10.9.5 on it.
![Windows Windows](http://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/make-windows-10-install-usb-drive-from-mac-os-x1.jpg)
Please help me! I NEED HELP!! I know I'm a few years late but I JUST came into possession of a 2007 macbook (A1181) and I'm upgrading the RAM (to 4GB) and hard drive (to 500 GB). I was hoping to make myself a bootable installer of Yosemite but I cannot manage to find anywhere to download it. That is the only thing hanging up my adventure. I'd be open to any other macOS as long as it can run the newest iTunes. I'm wary of going too high since this laptop is so old and I'm pretty new to doing my own upgrades.
THANKS!!:) Reply.