Want to run Windows from external USB drive

[d000hg]

I have done a little googling and it seems doing this under W7 is out unless I want to arse about... which I don't. I'm after the simplest way possible to be able to install Windows onto a USB drive so I can stick it into any PC/Mac and boot off it and work.

I know W8 has specific features for this but my research says this is only officially on the Enterprise version. Solutions I've found seem to involve installing W8 onto your main PC first or other shenanigans, which I don't really fancy.

So... what would people advise? The key point is it must work on my Mac... this is an alternative to installing Windows directly on the Mac using Parallels/BootCamp, which is plan B if this is too icky.

I've seen some suggestion of creating a Windows VM and then just copying it onto the USB drive... or creating it there in the first place even. I can install VirtualBox on my Mac if needed but would rather avoid parallels... otherwise I might as well just install on the Mac in the first place which I'd rather avoid as it doesn't have a very big disk.

[Sysman]

I don't think you can run Windows 7 from an external USB drive.

Can Windows 7 boot from an external USB or FireWire drive?

Short answer No, though there are probably some dirty hacks around.

You might have more luck with Windows 8.

I know this isn't what you want, but the latest release of OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.3 contains improved support for Windows 8 in Bootcamp.

[VectraMan]

You're going to have problems expecting the same Windows install to run on any hardware configuration too. You'd be better off with the VirtualBox route, as at least then the Virtual hardware will be the same wherever you run it.

[d000hg]

BootCamp's probably last on the list after installing to a VM on the Mac. I'm leaning now towards a VM on the external drive so I can fire it up on any PC with VM software installed. Except while VHD compatibility across different programs is not too bad, I have no understanding if I can create a Windows VirtualPC on a USB drive and load it in VirtualBox/Paralleles on the Mac.

[DaveB]

Discalimer: I haven't actually tried this, it's just a theory.

You could try formatting a USB drive for MAC OS and then using that as the target drive for a bootcamp install. Then when you want to use windows, insert the usb and use the bootcamp boot selector to boot from that drive.

[d000hg]

You're going to have problems expecting the same Windows install to run on any hardware configuration too. You'd be better off with the VirtualBox route, as at least then the Virtual hardware will be the same wherever you run it.

That's what I'm looking into now. Shame as Parallels is so good.

[garethevans1986]

How to Create a Windows To Go USB Drive

[Sysman]

You're going to have problems expecting the same Windows install to run on any hardware configuration too. You'd be better off with the VirtualBox route, as at least then the Virtual hardware will be the same wherever you run it.

I have done a bit of moving VirtualBox VMs across machines, and even used one in a dual boot config. Unless you want to get into editing the config files your best bet is to:

1. avoid snapshots.
2. if drive names or directory structures are different on the source and target systems, create a new VM on the target system and point it at the relevant disk image(s). This is what I did when migrating VBox VMs from Windows to Linux and OS X (see 1.).
3. where 2 doesn't apply you can migrate the VirtualBox VMs including config files to a new system, but to cope with differences in hardware (e.g. NICs) you simply go into Settings for each VM in turn and VBox automagically adjusts the settings to match the hardware it sees (there's a progress bar for this but on faster machines it's done before you notice it). This is what I did when using a dual boot config - I simply had to remember to go into Settings each time I booted into the "other" system. You'll know soon enough if you forget to do this because the VM will barf on initialisation.
4. avoid export and import via OVA files. This takes an age and in earlier versions was pretty unreliable, so I stopped wasting my time.

FWIW in my experience VirtualBox on Windows and Linux is pretty rock solid, but a bit flaky on OS X. VMware's Workstation for Linux or Windows (same licence key works on both platforms and IIRC you are allowed to go from one to the other just the once - read the licence and don't take the pee) has a lot more features than VMware Fusion for OS X, and the prices reflect that.

My choice for OS X is Parallels. Get the trial and if you dither long enough the price comes down - just yesterday they offered me USD 25 off so it's only $54.99.

[d000hg]

I gave up and bought Parallels... I had the trial a while ago and just this weekend got offered £20 off.

I was considering VirtualBox but decided against it for two main reasons:

1)Parallels has the fancy Coherence mode
2)Benchmarking Parallels, Fusion, and VirtualBox Against Boot Camp - The Mac Observer ... VB was a country mile behind on multimedia stuff. I develop realtime 3D graphics and the graphics pass-through on Parallels is remarkable... my app ran as fast through Parallels as it did when I used to have bootcamp installed on an older version of OSX.

[Sysman]

d000hg

Ta for the feedback and link. I'm going to take advantage of the current offer too.

One thing I recall about my trial of Parallels was that it was a bit over enthusiastic with setting up file associations for Windows programs - i.e. would fire up the equivalent Windows app when I was happy with the OS X app. You might want to review those settings.

And for anyone else who has done the Parallels trial already and wants to try again, their system looks at your email addy to see if you've done it before. I got around that by using an address with a different name and domain name.