#External hard drive as boot drive mac how to#
#External hard drive as boot drive mac for mac#

I'd like to be able to carry my 'work files' around on a passport usb drive and be done with it, able to access/manipulate it from any mac/pc/linux 'terminal' I want.

There are ways around this posted around the web and would be outside the MS EULA, so not discussable here. Windows does not support booting from an external drive. You can use the System Preferences to select which device to start up from.

#External hard drive as boot drive mac how to#

How to Start Up From an External Drive There are two ways to select the device your Mac will start up from. Turn on the external before powering up your Mac. Hard drive will need to be formatted as FAT32 in order to use it with any OS. Shut down the Mac and make sure the external is powered off when making the initial connections. After proceeding with the login, click on install. Just get a USB flash drive or hard drive and keep your work files on it. This will further ask you to log into your Apple account. Shut down the VM you have just created from the MacВ® menu bar (Actions > Shut Down). Create a Windows VM from Boot Camp using the instructions from KB 123314.

#External hard drive as boot drive mac for mac#

You can import your Boot CampВ® partition to a Parallels DesktopВ® for Mac virtual machine (VM) and use it on an external hard drive. I do most of my work on my mac, but I have a pc at home and my office provides me with a pc. Select your hard drive from the list that comes up on the screen. Import Boot Camp to the external hard drive.

You can technically use Disk Utility to copy your entire hard drive, but the result. Choose Try Ubuntu (default option) Prepare your SSD drive. Select the Orange EFI Boot option (right arrow, enter).

With the option key pressed on your keyboard, boot up your Mac. All files on your external drive will be deleted during the backup, so donвЂ™t use your Time Machine drive or a drive you use to store important things on. Insert your USB flash drive that has the Ubuntu installer on it. Now that I've asked my question, here's my situation - maybe there's a much better way to approach this. An external hard drive as big as your MacвЂ™s internal drive. #2 - Assuming I am successful in #1, can anyone help me understand if I'd be able to boot to this hard drive from a pc? I know a lot of the drivers would be different, I'm wondering if there would be a way to flag which drivers to use based on the hardware configuration.(I don't even know if I'm asking the right question here.) #1 - As I understand the general process, I'd have to be able to boot to an external hard drive from my mac - can anyone help me with this? I'd like to install windows on my external hard drive and be able to boot to it from my mac AND pc.