Boot Camp Assistant. Question!

[Foul]

Hey!

Quick question, 

So i've bought a Macbook, for school not realizing we "need" a windows computer for some programs, So ive looked at Boot Camp Assistant And it needs at least 50Gb for Windows, but my laptop is only 120Gb, SO I was wondering if it is possible to some how to download Windows onto a External Hard drive and "Dual Boot" from the Hardrive because i only really need Windows for the one class, And the External hard drive needs to still be usable with other things. 

Thanks!

[DrMacintosh]

Technically yes, practically no. You can do it, but it’s not easy and not that reliable.

 

What you you want to do is partition the main drive to where it’s comfortable for you and partition your external HDD and install your programs on that. 

[digitaldoughnut]

On 3/9/2018 at 4:46 AM, Foul said:

Hey!

Quick question, 

So i've bought a Macbook, for school not realizing we "need" a windows computer for some programs, So ive looked at Boot Camp Assistant And it needs at least 50Gb for Windows, but my laptop is only 120Gb, SO I was wondering if it is possible to some how to download Windows onto a External Hard drive and "Dual Boot" from the Hardrive because i only really need Windows for the one class, And the External hard drive needs to still be usable with other things. 

Thanks!

what about using a virtual machine, it will use less space.

You can use oracle virtual box which is free to use, you only need a license key for windows

[DrMacintosh]

1 hour ago, digitaldoughnut said:

what about using a virtual machine, it will use less space.

You can use oracle virtual box which is free to use, you only need a license key for windows

Splitting up a MacBooks resources is not a good idea.

[Husky]

If you don't need high performance graphics then you can run Windows in a virtual machine, you won't notice the difference and it works great for programming and just about everything except for high performance graphics and games. VirtualBox is a great free program to use and if you want more features, you can try something like Parallels or VMWare Fusion.

If you need high performance graphics then you can either use Boot Camp (which needed 40GB minimum on my machine) or you can use the external drive method. The Boot Camp method is A LOT easier and more reliable than the external drive method. The external drive method is very fragile and it is very easy to mess things up, if you accidentally unplug or knock the connector loose on the drive while the computer is running, you will lose data. I have tried multiple times to do the external drive method but it never worked for me no matter how many times or different methods I tried.

If you really want to do the external drive method then you can look up various guides on the internet on how to do it. One method is to connect the external drive to a Windows computer, format it (make sure you get all your data off of it beforehand), Grab the Microsoft "Media Creation Tool" to get the latest Windows 10 ISO which can be downloaded at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 and use Rufus to create the bootable external drive which can be downloaded at https://rufus.akeo.ie and use the Windows To Go option in Rufus. Once that's done, go to Boot Camp assistant and click Actions > Download Windows Support Software to download the drivers. Copy the drivers over to the root of the external drive. Boot your Mac into the external drive by holding down the option key, plugging the external drive in and selecting it in the boot menu. Once you are at the Windows 10 desktop, install the Windows Support Software (drivers) by running the installer in the driver folder that you copied to the external drive.

 

You can then create another partition for your normal files separate from Windows by opening Disk Management under Administrative Tools in Control Panel, right clicking the partition of your external drive and clicking Shrink, then going through the steps. After that right click the black "Unallocated Space" and select New Simple Volume, then go through the steps to make a new simple volume. Use NTFS if you are only going to use it for Windows, use exFAT if you are going to use it with Windows and macOS.

 

All methods need a Windows 10 ISO, you can grab one using the Media Creation Tool from Microsoft here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

 

I still prefer the Boot Camp and Virtual Machine methods though.

 

Hope this helps!