ENVMKU3S120 (.) 120GB Envoy Pro mini Ultra-Portable SSD. Delivers desktop-class performance in a tiny thumb drive form-factor. Tier 1, premium-grade NAND flash.Used, OWC Tested. Dec 27, 2019  Mac mini 2018 + win10 in EXTERNAL drive + hp Omen acc + GTX 760. Mac mini 2018 + win10 in EXTERNAL drive + hp Omen acc + GTX 760 Last Post RSS. When trying to install Intel Thunderbolt drivers, I get a message that 'Bootcamp does not support Intel drivers'. Aug 31, 2017  How to install Windows 10 via a Windows To Go external drive on Mac Subscribe Read full article ## Downlo.

Dec 29, 2018  Install Windows on the external SSD/HDD for your Mac. Tom Nelson has composed an excellent article on how to use Boot camp on an external drive and my post is a filter of followup comments.

Apple is trying to get us to dongle attach 'all the things' but what happens when that philosophy doesn't jive with all of your computing needs? One such situation is when wanting to run Windows 10 natively on your Mac (in my case my Mac mini). The 'normal' method would be to use Boot Camp to repartition your internal hard drive to make room for Windows 10. However, in some instances, repartitioning may not be an option. For example due to disk size limitations. Attaching a Thunderbolt 3 connected drive is the obvious solution but Windows 10 does NOT like to be installed onto detachable devices. Here's how to force the install of Windows 10 onto your externally attached drive!

What you'll need

Hardware

Of course you'll need an externally connected drive. I went with a 240GB SATA SSD ($30) that I placed into Thunderbolt 3 capable external SATA enclosure ($9).

Software

First up we'll need an ISO copy of Windows 10.

1. Navigate to the Windows 10 Download site.
2. Select Windows 10 as the edition.

3. Click Confirm.

4. Select the Language you want.
5. Click Confirm.
6. Click the 64-bit Download.
7. And the download will now begin.

Next, you can download the 30 day free trial of VMware Fusion.

1. Navigate to the VMware Fusion download site.
2. Click Download Now.
3. Allow the download to complete.

Next, we'll need to get a Windows utility called Win-to-USB. Although there is a free version, installing Windows latest 1809 October update will require use to but the non-free version ($30). You are free to use the free version for older Windows 10 ISO's suck as 1803.

1. Navigate to the Win-to-USB site.
2. Select Upgrade to buy a license. (or if using an older Windows 10 ISO simply click Download for the free version).
3. Click Download to get the software.

Finally, we'll need the Boot Camp Windows support files.

1. Start Boot Camp Assistant from Spotlight.
2. From the menu bar at the top of your screen click Action.

3. Select Download support software.

4. Choose a Download location and click Save.

The setup

The external drive

1. Attach your external drive to your Mac.
2. Start Disk Utility from Spotlight.
3. Select your external drive.
4. Click Erase.
5. Rename the drive to Boot Camp.
6. Ensure that the Format is Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

7. Ensure the Scheme is set to GUID Partition Map.

8. Click Erase.

VMware Fusion

1. Install the VMware Fusion software we downloaded earlier by double clicking the DMG file.
2. Double click the Installer.
3. Enter your Password.
4. Agree to the user agreement and select *try VMware Fusion for 30 days**.
5. Create a New Virtual Machine.
6. Drag and drop the Windows ISO file you downloaded earlier onto the VMware Fusion Window.

7. Click Continue.

8. Select your Windows Version to install. I use Windows 10 Home.
9. Click Continue.
10. Click Continue without key.
11. Select More isolated.
12. Click Continue.
13. Click Finish.
14. Click Save to allow the software to install Windows 10 in a virtual machine.
15. Allow the Virtual Machine to boot into a Windows 10 desktop.

Windows 10 VM

Your Windows 10 VM should now be up and running. We will now prepare the external drive and put a basic installation of Window s10 on it.

1. Click the Wrench Icon to start VM Settings.

2. Click USB & Bluetooth.

3. Check your external drive (here called Boot Camp).

4. Click OK.

5. Right-click the Windows Icon.

6. Select Disk Management.

7. Right-Click the Primary Partition of the attached drive.

8. Select Delete Volume.

9. Click Yes.
10. Right-Click on the new Unallocated disk partition.

11. Select New Simple Volume.

12. Click Next.
13. Click Next again.
14. Again click Next.
15. Change the Volume Label to Boot Camp.
16. Click Next.
17. Click Finish.

Download game cooking brigade. Next, we need to attach our Windows ISO to the Windows 10 VM.

1. From the menu bar select Virtual Machine > CD/DVD SATA > Choose Disk or Disk Image.

2. Select the Windows 10 ISO we downloaded.
3. Click Open.
4. From the menu bar select Virtual Machine > CD/DVD SATA > Connect CD/DVD.

Move files into the VM

1. Drag and drop the WinToUSB_Free.exe file we downloaded earlier into the Windows 10 VM window.
2. Drag and drop the WindowsSupport file we downloaded from Boot Camp earlier into the Windows 10 VM window.

Install Win-to-USB in the Windows 10 VM

1. Double-Click the WinToUSBFree.exe in Windows.
2. Install Win-to-USB with all of the defaults in your selected language.

Next, we run Win-to-USB.

1. Double-Click the desktop Icon for Win-to-USB.
2. If you bought a License to install 1809 October update, click Upgrade now.
3. Enter your license key and click Register.
4. Restart Win-to-USB.
5. Select the CD/DVD icon.
6. From the drop down list select your attached Windows 10 ISO.

7. Select the version of Windows 10 you wish to install.

8. Click Next.
9. From the drop down list select your attached drive.
10. Select the EFI partition (The smaller partition).
11. Select the boot partition (The larger partition).
12. Click Next.
13. Allow the installation to complete.
14. Click Exit.

Copy the WindowsSupport files from Boot Camp onto the newly updated windows partition on your externally attached drive.

1. Open File Explorer.
2. Navigate to the Boot Camp E: drive.
3. Move the files onto the Boot Camp E: drive.

Finally, shut down VMware Fusion.

1. Select Virtual Machine > Shut Down.

Mac OS changes

Now we can set the boot order to boot from the external drive.

1. Open System Preferences.
2. Select Startup Disk.
3. Click the Lock.
4. Enter your Password.
5. Select Boot Camp Windows.
6. Click Restart.

Finishing up

That's it! Once the machine reboots you'll be presented with a Windows 10 install sequence. Follow the prompts like you normally would and you'll be able to run Windows 10 natively on your Mac. Here are some notes to follow up on.

1. Once your windows installation is complete, remember to navigate into file explorer and install the Boot Camp drivers for your machine. That will setup your network card, display, and other Apple-centric devices. This will also install the Boot Camp program to help you reboot into macOS.
2. If for some reason you have troubles, power down your Mac and simply detach your external drive. You should be able to simply reboot into macOS.
3. If that fails, hold Command-Option-P-R all at once and wait until you hear two chimes. Once done, you'll be able to boot back into macOS.

Mac Mini Boot Camp External Drive Windows 7

Final comments

Now you can run native Windows 10 and native macOS Mojave. The best of both worlds with little compromise. If you have any tips on getting this working in a better or faster way. Please let us know in the comments!

We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more.

❤️ health

A story about me, two Apple Watches, and five lost years

So I bought another Apple Watch. Here’s the story!

By William Gallagher
Friday, April 12, 2019, 12:27 pm PT (03:27 pm ET)

Today's SSD drives are so fast that they speed up your entire Mac —but unless you spend a lot of money, they're also very small. You can manage on 128GB of space instead, but it takes discipline and apps to pull it off.


There's no question: the more storage you have on your Mac, the happier you'll be. Yet it's easy to say that a decent minimum is a 512GB SSD, it's harder to actually buy that.
You have to specify your drive size when you're buying the Mac and you have to get it from Apple. That means both predicting what you'll ever need with this machine —and paying well for it. A 512GB SSD adds $400 to the cost of a Mac mini, or practically half the price of the machine again.
A 1TB SSD is the same cost as a Mac mini, if you get it from Apple. And if you're buying a MacBook Air, getting it with a 512GB SSD will make that cheapest Mac laptop cost $1,599.
You get the same or at least similar price issues with machines like the higher-cost, higher-spec iMac or MacBook Pro. And if you're used to having a couple of terabytes of spinning hard drives on your old Mac, even a 512GB SSD is going to feel cramped.
On the one hand, though, that SSD is going to make your Mac feel faster than ever. If you have a Mac with a small drive —or one with just a lot less than you're used to —then you're going to have to change how you use that machine. There are, as ever, apps that can help you. There are settings that will be of use.
More than anything, however, you're going to need discipline.

Discipline

There are certain things you have to have on your Mac's internal drive, on its startup disk. There are others where through years of habit you think you have to have there. And then there are ones you don't.

External Hard Drive Boot Camp

As soon as you can, buy external drives. It's another outlay but it's vastly cheaper than paying Apple for a bigger SSD. Get at least two, and train yourself to move documents to both when you're done with them.

Archive everything when it doesn't need to be on your boot drive. And if you can keep those drives permanently connected to your Mac, online services like Backblaze will back them up exactly as if they're your internal drive.
And, Thunderbolt 3 is very fast, with theoretical maximums of 40 gbit/sec. Don't be afraid to get an external USB 3.1 type C drive capable of 10 gbit/sec for things you need fast access from, like for Photoshop scratch files, or the like.

Little choice

It's best to assume that applications must stay on your startup drive. That's not entirely true, but for the great majority of applications, it is safest and wisest.
However, apps tend to use temporary space on your drive. If you're editing video in any app, for instance, you're going to get a low disk space warning very quickly because of this.
Check the app to see if you can have this temporary space on another drive, though. Final Cut Pro X, for example, lets you set any drive as the place for these temporary files. It will always be faster to be using your startup drive, but if the external is an SSD then the difference may not be noticeable.

FCPX makes this easy but you can also do it with iTunes, which doesn't.
It's well worth the effort it takes to move iTunes's libraries to another drive, but right now you should probably wait. It looks likely that Apple will split up iTunes into its constituent parts, separating music and video for instance. And while the technique for moving them to an external drive will be the same, you may decide you only want to do this for, say, books.

Apps to help get a grip

If you're struggling right now with a drive that is complaining about how little room you've got left, use some apps to help you get a handle on it.
OmniDiskSweeper, for instance, is a very good and free utility from the makers of OmniFocus. It catalogues your drive and gives you a quick way to see what's taking up space - and delete it, if you choose. It's not for people who are new to the Mac, but it's a great tool if you know you shouldn't ever delete your Library.
For newer uses or just when you haven't time to study every document's file size, you can use Gemini. This app, included in Setapp, is a duplicate file finder and it's peculiar how easily you end up with two or more copies of the same thing.

Apps to stay on top

Once you've got a decent amount of space on your drive, the most useful thing you can do is plan. Make a workflow for yourself, just a list of when you do what with your documents. Figure out when you are done with them and when you can archive them off.
Then think about downloads. Your downloads folder already has too many files in it and because you haven't looked in a year, you can't easily tell now what's important and what isn't.
So plan to delete or archive every download after you've downloaded it.

And if this all seems like too much trouble, it is —but you can get Hazel to help. Hazel is a reason to buy a Mac, it's that good and useful. It monitors any folder you tell it to, and then it takes action on what it finds.

Mac Mini Boot Camp External Drives

We have Hazel monitor our desktop for invoices which it archives off for us after a day. After a month, Hazel will collect up all the images we've created and not only move them to an external archive but rename and sort them to make it easy to find one later.

Archive or delete

There's genuinely no question. If you have a Mac with a small drive then you are going to have to be conscious of what you Save and where you save it.
Yet if our Macs today come with smaller drives than we're used to, they're fantastically faster. If you move from an old iMac to a new Mac mini, well, you'll likely miss the screen as well as the storage space, but you'd never go back either.

Mac Mini 2018 Boot Camp External Drive

Keep up with AppleInsider by downloading the AppleInsider app for iOS, and follow us on YouTube, Twitter @appleinsider and Facebook for live, late-breaking coverage. You can also check out our official Instagram account for exclusive photos.