Install Windows 10 Via Bootcamp

Bootcamp Install Windows 10 Via Usb
How To Bootcamp Windows 10

I’ve been using a late 2013 Retina Macbook Pro as my primary computer for almost two years. It meets all my needs in my day job and is light enough to carry everywhere even while flying around for work.

Jul 08, 2017 Before you install Windows, stop and think about whether or not Boot Camp is the best choice for your needs. There are a couple of drawbacks to consider. When you use Boot Camp to install Windows on your Mac, you’ll need to re-partition your drive, which is going to take up quite a bit of your available drive space. Jun 07, 2017 After Windows is installed, restart when you want to switch between macOS and Windows. Use the Startup Disk preference pane in macOS or the Boot Camp system tray item in Windows to select your startup disk, then restart your computer. That’s it how to install windows 10 mac boot camp assistant partition, I hope you have learned this article, I hope you will ask your. Is possible to install Windows 10 via bootcamp, on a drive that is not the main drive? I am running 10.11 (el capitan), which is the highest OS that my machine seems to be able to run. EDIT No, I am not using an external drive, but an internal drive (the Mac Pro has 4 internal SATA bay for drives). Sep 06, 2016 Yes, i have tried to download the necesarry software to install windows 10 on my macbook air 2014, but after my mac boot to windows, there is no sound to guide me through the installation process. For now, i give up. Installing windows 8.1 via bootcamp without vision Guide - March 4, 2016 - Ashley - 13 comments.

Jan 23, 2017 Install Windows 10 using Boot Camp with an external drive. I’ve received tons of requests about installing Windows 10 on an external drive using Boot Camp, so we made another tutorial to explain. Install Windows on your Mac. Boot Camp is a utility that comes with your Mac and lets you switch between macOS and Windows. Download your copy of Windows 10, then let Boot Camp Assistant walk you through the installation steps.

While I love the time flying affords to switch offline and catch up on some well deserved gaming, mobile gaming can be bit bland and Mac OS X doesn’t run my favourite games like Skyrim without some fairly unreliable and poorly performing hacks via Wine.

But what about Bootcamp? I was in a very limited place, the 256GB SSD quickly fills up and I couldn’t spare the space to partition and install Bootcamp Apple’s way.

Enter the Samsung Portable SSD T1, this speedy little drive is small enough to hang off the side of my Macbook without getting in the way and a bump or two won’t damage it.

Unfortunately Windows refuses to install to any USB based storage which has historically been far too slow to run a fully fledged operating system.

But that’s no issue for the T1 which by Samsung’s own estimates can reach up to 450MB/s. It’s more than fast enough to run Windows as if it were running directly on the internal drive.

Luckily with the power of virtualisation it’s easy to bypass these pesky limitations and get Bootcamp running entirely off the external USB SSD drive without making any changes to the internal SSD.

Read on to find out how!

What you’ll need:

You’ll need a few things to complete this guide:

A Mac which supports booting from a USB Device (see Apple Support: Mac computers that support Windows 10)
A USB 3.0 SSD similar to the Samsung T1 (a flash storage device will not be fast enough)
A spare USB drive with a minimum of 2GB of storage to copy the Bootcamp Drivers over to Windows.
Basic understanding of VirtualBox and installing Windows.

Download Windows 10 Installation

Windows 10 is available to download from Microsoft and allows a grace period to license the installation. Windows 10 can be purchased from the Microsoft Store.

Follow the prompts to download Windows 10 installation disk.

The download is 3.7GB so it may take some time, the next steps will prepare your system to install Windows 10 to the USB SSD.

Download Bootcamp Software for Windows 10

Apple offer a prepackaged driver installation for Bootcamp.

Thanks to Reddit user sadalhayat for identifying this link.

Once this has downloaded copy it to a spare USB drive separate from SSD you will be using to install Bootcamp. Save this for later.

Mac OS X cannot write to the Windows drive out of the box. For this reason you will need to use a separate drive to copy the Bootcamp Software into the new Bootcamp Installation.

Install VirtualBox

Are you wondering why VirtualBox is the next step? Don’t worry, we’re taking advantage of the virtualisation technology to kick start the installation of Windows 10.

We will be using VirtualBox to mount the USB drive as a virtual hard disk inside the Virtual Machine. This bypasses the limitations imposed by the Microsoft Installer preventing us from installing Bootcamp the Apple way.

Download and Install VirtualBox

If you don’t already have VirtualBox, it can be downloaded from their website. Once you have downloaded the package, use the installation package to get up and running with VirtualBox.

Identify your USB Drive’s device location

Open up the Terminal and type:

This command will list all the connected drives on your computer. Browse through the list until you find your storage device.

The text highlighted red “/dev/disk2” is the information we need. This information will tell VirtualBox exactly which storage device it needs to access.

Please note this information may be different on your machine. Read the list carefully to match the address of your USB SSD.

Disconnecting Mac OS X from the USB SSD.

Before we connect VirtualBox to our USB SSD you will need to completely unmount the SSD from Mac OS X to allow VirtualBox full access to the USB SSD.

This can be done by searching for Disk Utility in Spotlight then

Bootcamp Install Windows 10 Via Usb

Choosing the External USB Device
Choosing Eject in the top Menu

Create a Virtual Disk mapping to the USB Drive

This is where the magic starts. We will be using VirtualBox to mount the USB SSD as a normal hard disk in order to trick the Windows 10 installer into thinking it is using a normal hard drive.

First we need to create a Virtual Disk File for VirtualBox so it knows what storage device we are accessing.

Below is the command we will be modifying to create the Virtual Disk file

You can copy the entire command with the exception of the last part “/dev/diskX” which will need to be changed to the drive number you identified in the previous step.

In my case it is “/dev/disk2”.

Installing Windows 10 to the USB SSD via VirtualBox

Now that we have everything organised we can start the installation of Windows 10 via VirtualBox.

We will need to give VirtualBox elevated permissions to access our handy bootcamp.vmdk file.

In your terminal type:

This will force VirtualBox to run as the root user and have permission to access the USB SSD.

Creating Virtual Machine

In VirtualBox choose “New” and type “Windows 10 Bootcamp” and click Continue.

Change Memory to “512” MB and click Continue.

On the Hard Disk screen choose “Use an existing virtual hard disk file” browse to your home directory and select the newly created “bootstrap.vmdk”.

Installing Bootcamp, from a Virtual Machine

Now that we have scaffolded the Virtual Machine, connected the hard drive and downloaded Windows 10, it is time to install Windows 10 onto our shiny new USB SSD.

Back in VirtualBox we will need to mount the Windows 10 Installation ISO into the virtual DVD drive.

Open the Virtual Machine’s Settings Panel.
Select the Storage tab on the top of the Settings Panel.
Select the Empty DVD Icon.
Select the CD Icon next to the Optical Drive, Choose Virtual Optical Disk File and select the Windows 10 ISO file.
Select OK to save the new settings.

Run the Normal Windows 10 Installation

Follow through the standard screens to begin the Windows 10 installation.

Clicking next and agreeing to the terms and conditions is all you really need to do here except for the following points:

When you meet the installation type screen, select “Custom”.

When you are asked where to install Windows, just delete any existing partitions and select “Next”.

Don’t worry, Windows can only see the USB SSD drive you assigned by VirtualBox, your Mac’s existing partitions are not accessible here.

Important! Don’t let windows restart!

This is the most crucial step to successfully installing Bootcamp on an external USB 3.0 SSD

When Windows 10 is restarting, make sure you prevent Windows restarting inside the Virtual Machine and completing the installation.

When you see the VirtualBox BIOS screen select the Red Close Button
Choose “Power off the machine”.
Choose OK to power off the Virtual Machine.

That’s enough Virtualisation!

Now that we’ve completed the first phase of the Windows 10 installation, we don’t need to use VirtualBox anymore.

This completes all the steps required on the Mac OS X side of the installation.

Reboot your Mac into Windows

It’s now time to restart your Mac and boot into Windows 10. Power off your Mac and hold the Option key until disk icons appear onscreen.

Let Windows 10 install

If everything went well Windows 10 should start booting and begin the initial installation.

Just follow through the screens and fill in your details as required.

Windows 10 may reboot during the installation. If this occurs, make sure you press the Option Key and select the Boot Camp Drive to continue the installation.

Install Bootcamp Software

Plug in the spare USB Drive we copied the Bootcamp Software to earlier and run “AppleBCUpdate.exe”.

This will start the Bootcamp installation software to install drivers for the Apple Keyboard and Mouse, Wireless, Graphics and other devices in your system.

That’s it!

If everything went according to plan you should now be able to boot directly into Windows 10 whenever the USB SSD is connected to your computer!

My experience has been rock solid, and I can enjoy all the benefits of running Bootcamp on my Mac to run Windows Applications and Games without sacrificing the valuable storage space of the internal SSD.

Did you find this article helpful? Let me know in the comments section below!

Keep in mind Microsoft and Apple never intended for you to run Bootcamp this way. Make sure you never disconnect the USB SSD from your system while Windows is running!

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Thanks to the switch from PowerPC to Intel many years ago, a Mac is just another PC. Sure, Macs come with macOS, but you can easily install Windows alongside macOS using Apple’s built-in Boot Camp feature.

Boot Camp installs Windows in a dual-boot configuration, which means both operating systems will be installed separately. You can only use one at a time, but you get the computer’s full power in each.

Do You Actually Need to Use Boot Camp?

RELATED:5 Ways to Run Windows Software on a Mac

Before you install Windows, stop and think about whether or not Boot Camp is the best choice for your needs. There are a couple of drawbacks to consider.

When you use Boot Camp to install Windows on your Mac, you’ll need to re-partition your drive, which is going to take up quite a bit of your available drive space. Since storage on a Mac is fairly expensive, it’s something you should really think about. In addition, you’ll need to reboot every time you want to use Windows, and reboot again when you want to switch back to macOS. The benefit of Boot Camp, of course, is that you’re running Windows directly on the hardware, so it’ll be a lot faster than a virtual machine.

If all you need to do is run a few Windows applications on your Mac, and those applications don’t a lot of resources (like 3D games), you might consider using a virtual machine like Parallels (there’s a free trial), VMware Fusion, or VirtualBox to run that software instead. The vast majority of the time you don’t actually need to use Boot Camp, and you’d be better off using a virtual machine. If, however, you’re looking to play Windows games on your Mac, Boot Camp might be a good choice.

RELATED:How to Seamlessly Run Windows Programs on Your Mac with Parallels

For most people, though, Parallels makes running Windows on your Mac dead simple. It’s something we use at How-To Geek every single day for testing software and running Windows. The integration with macOS amazingly well done, and the speed blows away Virtualbox. In the long run, the price is well worth it. You can even use Parallels to load your Boot Camp partition as a virtual machine while you are in macOS, giving you the best of both worlds.

What Version of Windows Can I Run?

Which version of Windows you can run depends on your Mac: recent models support only Windows 10, while some older Macs only work with older versions of Windows. Here’s a quick outline, along with links to Apple’s official lists of supported models.

Windows 10 is supported on most Macs made in 2012 and later.
Windows 8.1 is supported on most Macs made between 2010 and 2016, with some exceptions.
Windows 7 is supported, for the most part, only on Macs made in 2014 and earlier, and you’ll need an even older Mac to run Windows Vista or XP.

Note that Macs can only run 64-bit, non-Enterprise versions of Windows.

RELATED:Where to Download Windows 10, 8.1, and 7 ISOs Legally

To install Windows, you’ll need an ISO file of the installer. You can download Windows installation media for free if you already have a product key, though you don’t really need a product key to run Windows 10. If you’re installing Windows 7, you’ll also need a USB drive at least 16GB in size for the installer and drivers. Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 do not any external drive for installation.

How to Install Windows on Your Mac

Ready to install Windows? It’s probably a good idea to back up your Mac before getting started, just in case. Odds are nothing will go wrong, but any time you’re partitioning things there’s always a chance. Done? Let’s get started.

You’ll use the Boot Camp Assistant application that comes on your Mac. Open it by pressing Command+Space, typing Boot Camp, and pressing Enter.

The Boot Camp Assistant will walk you through partitioning, downloading drivers, and starting the installer for you. Click “Continue” and you’ll be asked which ISO file you’d like to use and how big you’d like your Windows partition to be.

RELATED:Beginner Geek: Hard Disk Partitions Explained

How you should allocate the space depends on how much space you want for your Windows system and how much space you want for your macOS system. If you want to resize your partitions after this process, you’ll need to use a third-party tool, so choose carefully now.

Note that, if you’re installing Windows 7, the order here is slightly different: Boot Camp will first guide you through setting up your installer USB disk, then ask you about partitioning.

When you’re ready, click “Install” and Boot Camp will start downloading drivers, which it calls “Windows support software.”

The installer will also partition your disk, copy the installer to that partition, and place the drivers so they’ll run after installation. You can keep using your Mac while all this is running, though things will slow down a lot during the partitioning phase.

Eventually, your Mac will reboot and you’ll see the standard Windows installer.

Select the partition labeled BOOTCAMP if asked—do not install to any other partition, or you might end up removing macOS and losing all your data. (You did back up, right?) Windows will now finish installing normally.

The Windows on-boarding process might ask you to connect to the Internet, but you won’t be able to do this without drivers: just skip these steps until you get to your desktop, at which point the Boot Camp installer will appear.

Proceed with the installer to set up your drivers, and you should be all set!

How to Boot Into Windows On Your Mac

By default, your Mac will still boot to macOS. To access Windows, you need to turn off your Mac, then turn it on while holding the Option key. You’ll be asked which drive you’d like to boot from.

How To Bootcamp Windows 10

If you’d like to boot to Windows by default, you set this in recovery mode, or using the Boot Camp Control Panel in Windows. You’ll find this in your system tray after installing Windows, though you may have to click the Up arrow to find it.

This control panel allows you to choose the default operating system your Mac boots to, as well as tweak keyboard and trackpad settings.

While in Windows, the Mac’s Command key functions as the Windows key, while the Option key functions as the Alt key. If you have a Touch Bar, you’ll see a complete set of buttons, similar to the Extended Control Strip in macOS.

To see the function keys (F1, F2, etc.) simply hold down the Fn key. There’s no way to make this the default in Windows.

How to Remove Windows From Your Mac

If you want to remove Windows from your Mac and free up space, reboot into macOS and open the Boot Camp Assistant again. You’ll see the Restore Disk to a Single Volume option.

Boot Camp Assistant will automatically remove Windows and expand the macOS partition for you, reclaiming all of that space. Warning: This will delete all the files on your Windows partition, so be sure you have backup copies first!