Can Windows 8 boot from FireWire?

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I read many times Windows 7 is unable to boot from an external FireWire drive but I wonder if Windows 8 is able to do so.

I need to run Windows on my Mac but only very few times so my idea was to move it all to an external drive. I have one of the first Intel Macs so running Windows in a virtual machine is not really fun. The performance is just too poor.

Adding a Boot Camp partition to my internal drive is also not possible at the moment.

Holli

Posted 2012-08-28T14:10:06.980

Reputation: 181

As long as the BIOS supports, yes it can.. – tumchaaditya – 2012-08-30T08:20:20.103

@tumchaaditya: If Windows 7 can't, then why would Windows 8 be able to? Do you have an official source that confirms this support has been added to Windows 8? – Tamara Wijsman – 2012-10-28T16:32:06.790

Answers

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If you use the regular Windows 8 setup, you will see the following message:

Windows cannot be installed to this disk. Setup does not support configuration of or installation to disks connected through a USB or IEEE 1394 port.

But, if you have a Windows 7/8 BootCamp partition, you can use it to install Windows 8 on the external drive: Is there an equivalent to Windows To Go for personal use?

Elmo

Posted 2012-08-28T14:10:06.980

Reputation: 12 667

Asked: 2012-08-28T14:10:06.980

Viewed: 1 389 times

Active: 2014-09-14T00:05:27.043