"I carry everything with me!" - under this motto, we will conduct an unusual experiment, that is, the installation of Windows 10 on an external hard drive to work on a portable or desktop Mac.
Conventional methods are not suitable for creating a complete portable workspace. You can, of course, use a virtual machine - work inside a VM in the office and at home, and carry its image on an external drive. This approach is obviously inconvenient in that performance suffers, as well as the need to have a virtual machine already installed on all Macs with which you have to work. Another option is to use Boot Camp, but this option is fine if you have free disk space.
Note that attempts to repeat the author's actions may lead to the loss of the equipment warranty and even to its failure. The material is provided for informational purposes only. If you are going to reproduce the steps described below, we strongly advise you to carefully read the entire article at least once.
Requirements:
- Mac running macOS Sierra or OS X El Capitan.
- Windows computer.
- External hard drive.
- USB stick.
- Windows 10 ISO image.
- USB keyboard and mouse.
- Rufus utility.
How to install Windows 10 to an external drive to work with Mac:
Step 1: To download the Windows 10 ISO image on your Mac, open. You need to open the Microsoft website and download the image on a Mac, as the company will provide a specially prepared version of the image.
Select "Windows 10", product language "Russian", 64-bit version of Windows 10.
Step 2: On your Mac, launch Boot Camp Assistant. It will help you download the drivers required for Windows to run on your computer.
Step 3: From the top menu, select Action -\u003e Download Windows Support Software. Specify the location where the drivers will be loaded (WindowsSupport folder).
Step 4: Connect a USB stick to your Mac. Copy the Windows 10 ISO you downloaded in step 1 and the WindowsSupport folder you downloaded in step 3 to a USB stick.
Step 5: Connect an external storage device and a USB stick to your Windows computer.
Step 6: Download the free Rufus utility by going through.
Step 7: Start Rufus. Select your external USB storage from the Devices drop-down list. Click on the disk icon next to Create bootable disk and select the ISO image from the flash drive.
Step 8: The option Create bootable disc using ISO image appears. Switch to Windows to Go.
Note: This option will not be available if you downloaded the Windows image not on a Mac, but on a Windows computer.
Step 9: Press the Start button and wait for the procedure to complete. This can take up to 10 minutes, depending on the speed of the drive.
Step 10: In the explorer pane, select your external drive and copy the WindowsSupport drivers folder that you downloaded in step 3 to it.
Step 11: Connect an external hard drive to your Mac. Restart your Mac while holding the Alt key on your keyboard. On the start screen, select your external hard drive.
Step 12: Connect a USB keyboard and mouse to your Mac for the initial Windows setup. In the process, the Mac may reboot, in which case you need to hold Alt and select the external drive.
Step 13: After you have completed the initial Windows setup, the operating system desktop appears on your Mac. In explorer open the external drive, folder with WindowsSupport drivers. Here go to the BootCamp -\u003e Setup folder and complete the driver installation.
Step 14: It's all! You have finished setting up Windows. You can now disable the external keyboard and mouse — your Mac's trackpad and keyboard will work in a Windows environment.
No matter how hard they try in Russia to promote various alternative operating systems for computers like Linux or MacOS, none of them has become more popular than Windows. To date, the most modern version of the OS from Microsoft is Windows 10. It has a convenient user interface, excellent functionality and broad capabilities. In my opinion, this version has every chance to jump over the legendary "seven" in popularity.
Despite the very, very friendly interface, even for an unprepared person, users still have questions. One of the most common is how to install Windows 10 on a clean computer from scratch. Let's take a look at it in more detail!
Preparing to install Windows 10
Before doing anything, you need to thoroughly prepare! The first thing you need is an installation disc or a bootable USB flash drive with a Windows 10 image! The easiest way to do it is a proprietary utility from Microsoft.
Despite the fact that outdated DVDs are often used to install Windows 10 on a computer, it is much easier and faster to use an installation flash drive. The only condition is that the capacity of the USB drive must be at least 4 Gigabytes.
It is also worth taking care of the drivers for the main components of the PC - motherboard, video adapter, sound card, WiFi adapter, etc. You can separately download the software for each device on the website of its manufacturer, or use the automatic driver installation tool. For example, DriversPack Solution.
After the installation flash drive is ready, plug it into the USB port. Now you need to force the computer or laptop to boot from it. To do this, when switching on, press the "Del" key. For laptops, the F2 button is most often used for this.
In BIOS, you need to go to the advanced settings "Advanced Settings" and find the item "First Boot Device". Here you need to select the item "USB-HDD" in the list - this is the USB flash drive.
Note: On laptops, as a rule, the BIOS has a separate "Boot" section dedicated to booting the device:
Everything is the same here - we find the first boot device "1st Boot Priority" and put the installation media there, from which Windows will be installed on the PC.
Installing an operating system on a computer
The preparation is complete, now we proceed directly to the installation. If you did everything correctly, then after the next reboot the language selection will appear:
Now you will be required to enter your product key. Without it, further actions will not be available.
If you do not have a license key, then you can always use free installation keys for dozens, which can be found here -. They allow you to easily install Windows 10 on a computer or laptop, but then you still have to look for a licensed one somewhere or use alternative options.
The next step is the license agreement that no one ever reads:
The next stage is very important. If you are trying to install Windows 10 on a completely new hard drive HDD or SSD, then first you need to partition it.
Press the "Create" button and below we get the following menu:
Here you need to specify the size of the system disk to be created. After you click the "Apply" button, the following window will pop up:
We agree by clicking on "Yes" and we see the following picture:
The installer has created a system partition of 500 megabytes, which is reserved by the system and the main installation partition for the operating system.
Note: If you have a large hard drive, it is more optimal to create several partitions than one, but huge.
If the hard drive HDD or SSD has already been partitioned, then the partition selected for installing Windows 10 should simply be formatted by clicking on the corresponding button.
During this, at least one computer restart will occur.
On average, installing Windows 10 on a computer or laptop takes 20 minutes to an hour, depending on the specifications of the device.
When the "Increase work speed" window appears, it is best to select the "Use standard parameters" option.
Again, we are waiting for the installer to perform a series of operations.
We click on the line "This computer belongs to me" and on the button "Next". Then skip the step of entering your Microsoft account information.
Now we enter the login, and below the login password and confirmation.
Installing Windows 10 on a PC will take about 10-15 minutes on average. You just have to wait patiently for the process to complete:
As soon as the desktop appears, it means that the installation process is complete. You did it!
If anyone else has any questions, see the video instruction:
What to do after installing Windows 10
Basically, the operating system is already installed and ready to go. But nevertheless, it is necessary to make a number of finishing touches.
Open the device manager:
Pay attention - are there lines with an exclamation mark? These are unidentified components or devices for which Windows 10 does not have a standard driver. If everything is clean, then in principle the system can be used. Although I would still advise as soon as the installation of Windows 10 is completed, be sure to run the DriverPack Solution utility and automatically update all drivers to the latest versions.
The fact is that standard universal drivers are used to turn on the computer, start up and work more or less normally. They are not always suitable for user tasks and therefore such an update is extremely necessary.
Secondly, be sure to go to the "Tens" options and open the "Update and Security" section, where you start the process of searching for and installing system updates.
There is always an equal and opposite reaction to action. Newton's third law.
There was a need to install a second Windows operating system on removable media. Hello corporate protection. It seemed that there was nothing complicated about it, but installing Windows 7 on external devices is impossible with regular means. Google, we find a suitable software for installing Windows on removable drives: PwBoot and WinToUSB.
Attention this article is not about bootable disks and flash drives with software packages or installation files! This article is about bootable disks and flash drives with full-fledged Windows 7/8/10 installed on them.
Installing a second Windows operating system on a USB flash drive
Having studied the materiel, it was decided to try to install the operating system on USB Flash. I must admit right away that I failed. You will need a flash drive over 8 GB and preferably USB 3.0, the speed of which is comparable to the speed of the built-in HDD. USB 2.0 is 2-4 times slower, so the operating system will slow down a lot.
Also, to install Windows, we need an installation image, preferably with a medicine, which I downloaded from the torrent (of course, only for acquaintance and deleted as soon as I finished writing the article). It turned out that PwBoot only works with install.wim, which is in the original image, but repackaged into other files in assemblies. At least 2 downloaded actual cured Windows did not have it. In addition, there are problems in the future: after system changes, for example, installing drivers, the system crashes into a BSOD blue screen. The problem can be solved by connecting the device to a working operating system and patching the system in the PwBoot program. Or run a bat file that will start the service and edit the registry automatically every time you reboot the system. The second option is preferable, but all the same, everything is somehow complicated. And there is no too lazy to look for a suitable Windows image. In addition to this, a virtual drive program is required to install the operating system image (eg UltraISO).
Also, the WinNTSetup3 program caught my eye for the same purposes, but judging by the description - an analogue of PwBoot and install.wim is also required.
WinToUSB gave an error - not enough space. Ok, let's try on 16 Gb - the same thing. Nothing is clear, there is clearly enough space. I did not find a solution to the problem in the search. Apparently I specified the system and boot disks incorrectly, see below.
I tried various perversions for the sake of sports interest: formatting the flash drive as usb hdd and just hdd using rufus - to no avail.
Perhaps I did something wrong, or was not persistent enough. But the installation on USB Flash failed, it was decided to install Windows on an external USB HDD. The amount of hard disk storage played a decisive role. 16 GB is not enough for normal Windows operation.
Installing a second Windows operating system on a USB HDD
The first step is to split the hard drive on the floor into partitions. I usually do this using Hiren’s Boot CD installed on a bootable USB flash drive. But in this case, you can use the standard Windows tools, because the second Windows is installed from under Windows.
- Go to Disk Management through Control Panel -\u003e System and Security -\u003e Administrative Tools -\u003e Create and format hard disk partitions. And create at least two sections. The first 100 MB partition is called the system partition and is used for boot files and will later be hidden by the system. Main and active section. The second - from 50 GB, the main partition is used for system files and is called bootable. Yes, that's right: the names and purposes of the sections are reversed.
- Then I used the WinToUSB program, everything is in Russian. The only problem is to correctly specify the system (where the boot files will be) and boot (where the system will be) drives. The program installs the operating system directly from the ISO file, so you don't need a virtual disk drive. I was installing Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate.
- After the installation is complete, connect the portable hard drive to the computer (laptop) where it will use portable Windows or reboot. In BIOS / UEFI, specify boot from a portable USB HDD.
- After the installation is complete, indicate the location and size of the paging file. I specified the path to the swap file of the first OS. Saving space, systems are not working at the same time, the system constantly accesses the paging file and USB is not the best option in terms of speed.
Important notes from WinToUSB developers:
- Windows 7 is not completely portable. You may have driver problems loading on different computers, so it is highly recommended to use Windows 10 / 8.1 / 8 to create portable Windows.
I didn't have any problems. The only thing that happened was that after installing the drivers, the system booted itself the third time. No intervention. Just in case, run the bat file.
- Windows 7 does not have built-in USB 3.0 support, so Windows 7 will have to boot from a USB 2.0 port. Regular USB drives are very slow.
Windows performance is satisfactory. I did not notice any significant brakes.
- It takes a long time to install and start Windows from a regular USB drive, we strongly recommend using a USB hard drive.
- You must be an administrator on the computer on which you are installing WinToUSB.
Second hard drive for Windows 7/8/10
If you have a laptop, the solution to installing a second operating system might be to install a second hard drive instead of the CD / DVD drive. This is the best solution:
- no additional troubles with the installation of the system;
- the ability to install an SSD drive, the speed of which is 3 times higher than the HDD - Windows just flies;
- no interference is visually visible - the hard disk adapter looks like a CD / DVD drive.
Many users of the Windows operating system wondered: is it possible to install it on removable media, including an external hard drive? There are several reasons for this step, for example, the installed OS on removable media will allow you to easily restore the OS if it stops starting. For the Linux kernel, this issue has long been resolved, and few people do not know about such things as Live CDs, which allow you to check the hard disk for viruses before starting the installed OS, perform various operations with the hard disk (sizing, formatting, etc.). etc.). However, Windows, an external USB hard drive, was incompatible until recently. Now this issue can already be resolved, but only by performing certain actions, because there is no special version of Windows for hard drives.
If the installation problem is thoroughly solved in Linux and everything is done with standard tools without any difficulties, certain problems may arise with Windows:
- The OS will inform you that the installation on removable media, as well as the launch cannot be performed;
- windows does not support virtual hard disks;
- when trying to start Windows from removable media, BSoD (blue screen of death) error appears.
An unofficial way to install Windows on a hard drive
Some experts independently decided to study and find possible solutions to such a Windows installation on removable media. It must be said right away that with such an installation, the read and write speed will not be high due to the rather low bandwidth of the USB bus. But if we consider that this installation is necessary for solving certain problems, and not for full-fledged work, this disadvantage is not so significant.
Before proceeding with the installation, you need to have in stock:
- an external hard drive, or a USB flash drive, the volume of which must be at least 8 Gb;
- an installation file for one of the virtual machines, for example, VMWare Player;
- image of Windows7 OS maximum, or corporate. They support virtual machines, in other editions this is not possible (you can use other OS modifications, but in this case you will have to install on a physical disk without using a virtual machine);
- native VHD boot utility to properly configure the virtual machine.
Installing Windows on an external hard drive
First of all, copy the install.wim file from the installation disk or OS image, which contains all the necessary installation files (you can use the built-in ImageX utility to work with such images).
Open PWBoot with administrator rights. Select the full installation item, because the second item implies updating the already installed OS.
Further, with each step, everything will be extremely clear and it will not be difficult for you to install. The only thing to remember is that this utility does not accept Cyrillic (input of computer and user names must be in English only).
If your image contains several OS versions, you need to decide which one you need to install. Run ImageX, with a set of parameters: imagex / info x: \\ file location \\ install.wim.
After that, you need to decide on a specific OS to install, each of which is described after the phrase IMAGE INDEX (highlighted by rectangles in the screenshot).
At the next step, the utility will offer you OS installation options:
- direct installation to removable media
- creating a single virtual machine file.
These two options are radically different from each other. If in the first case, the operating system will be directly on the flash drive, you can only start from it and cannot copy or deploy to another medium (formatting will be required, after which all data will be deleted), then in the second case you will have the opportunity use of network resources, access to all hard drives, etc. In this case, the speed of reading and writing will be practically the same as with a standard Windows installation. Having this image file, you can easily transfer it to other media and start from it, including stationary hard drives. Also, if you performed some operation incorrectly, here you can easily roll back to the stable version.
Having chosen the option with a virtual disk, the next step is to determine the amount of allocated physical memory. The operating system requires about 8 Gb, but for full-fledged work, you need a little more space. Depending on the size of the removable media, set the threshold that will be optimal for you (all files created will be in the image, exactly in the free space of the allocated physical memory).
The next step is to select the removable media where the virtual machine image will be placed.
After the process is complete, you need to make personal settings. To keep the installed OS running quickly and smoothly, disable services and services that you rarely use or do not use at all. Also, it is recommended to disable indexing of the hard drive to speed up the process of reading and writing data.
Try not to perform time-consuming operations in a virtual machine, because resources are quite limited in it.
The last screenshot shows the VHD. And although the view is practically no different from the standard one, here the C drive is a special container in which the OS is placed, and the other drives are partitions of physically connected hard drives and removable media.
In contact with
Recently, subscribers often contact me with the following problem: after connecting to a computer, an external hard drive is not visible. The connection goes well, the drivers are installed without errors, but it does not appear in the list of logical drives in Windows 10 Explorer. Why is this happening. There are several reasons for this trouble, both software and hardware.
Before proceeding with troubleshooting, first try disconnecting the removable storage device from the computer and reconnecting it to an adjacent port.
On some models, the cable comes with two USB connectors on one side. The first is used for the main connection, and the second provides additional power. If the second one is not connected, then the device may simply not have enough power.
If you connected the gadget to the USB 3.0 ports and the computer does not see the external drive, then try connecting it to the regular ports. They differ in color. High speed connectors of the new standard are usually highlighted in blue or yellow. Like this:
The usual ones are gray or black. With this step, you will eliminate possible problems with the USB 3.0 driver on your computer or laptop, due to which the removable disk may not be visible.
Now let's move on to software-level reasons.
One of the most common cases when a removable external drive is not visible in explorer is that the Windows operating system did not assign a letter to the new logical partition when connecting. Accordingly, it will not appear in the list of logical partitions in the explorer. It is easy to fix.
On the desktop, right-click on the computer icon and select "Computer Management."
This window will open:
We find the section "Storage Devices", and in it - the item "Disk Management". A list of logical and physical drives should appear on the right side of the window. In it, by volume, we find our external hard drive:
Select a free letter and click on "OK". Personally, I like to line up the letters from the very end of the alphabet - X, Y or Z.
Also, if there are problems in the operation of a removable USB drive, I would advise you to open the Device Manager and look in the "Portable Devices" section:
Your gadget should be displayed here. Click on it with the right mouse button and select the "Properties" item.
In the window that appears, on the "General" tab, look in the "Device status" field. There should be no mistakes, everything should be fine. Then open the "Driver" tab:
If you still can't see your external hard drive in Windows 10 Explorer, try updating the driver. In some cases, completely removing the device and installing the driver again helps.
P.S .: If all the recommended steps did not bring the expected result, then I would recommend trying to connect your removable drive to another computer or laptop and check its performance on it, since most likely there is a hardware failure.
