Resolved Windows already installed on hard drive. Boot into it on Mac. How? (SOLVED)

[eyeangle]

I'm getting rid of my 5 years old PC in place of an 2008 iMac I was recently given second hand. I took the hard drive out of the PC and now I want to boot into it using Boot Camp. Is this possible or do I need Parallels Desktop 9? The PC hard drive is 500GB NTSF and the mac is 320GB.

I'm not going to re-install Windows on a new hard drive, it's not worth it, it has years of history on it and programs etc. I don't want to start it all again...

The reason I'd prefer Boot Camp is because I can give all the power of the iMac directly to Windows7 without running two operating systems at the same time, thus slowing it down.

 

[joec1101]

Just press and hold the "alt" (option) key while it's booting and it will give you a choice to boot into either OS.

 

[eyeangle]

I've tried this but the hard drive doesn't show up. I've plugged it into the iMac via a USB adapter connecting to the PC hard drive.

Do I have to run the Boot Camp assistant first?

 

[saturnotaku]

Is this possible or do I need Parallels Desktop 9?

Neither. Boot Camp will only work when Windows is installed on your Mac's internal hard drive, and you'll also need a separate Windows license, too.

What you are wanting to do is not possible.

 

[eyeangle]

OK thanks for helping rule out those possibilities.

I had another idea.

Is it possible to install Windows onto an external hard drive using parallels 9 and then use something similar to mac's migration assistant (for windows) to clone/or transfer my PC hard drive over to my new virtual PC running on the external hard drive?

Edit: Windows7 equivalent to mac's Migration Assistant is called 'Windows Easy Transfer'

 

[Nermal]

I'm fairly sure that VMware can run Windows from a standalone drive. I think there's a free trial version available.

 

[Bear]

OK thanks for helping rule out those possibilities.

I had another idea.

Is it possible to install Windows onto an external hard drive using parallels 9 and then use something similar to mac's migration assistant (for windows) to clone/or transfer my PC hard drive over to my new virtual PC running on the external hard drive?

Edit: Windows7 equivalent to mac's Migration Assistant is called 'Windows Easy Transfer'

VMware definitely lets you import from a Windows PC or a disk. Parallels should. There's documentation at both their websites on importing.

 

[Gav Mack]

VMware definitely lets you import from a Windows PC or a disk. Parallels should. There's documentation at both their websites on importing.

7 Easy transfer only imports the user profile over and then some bits end up missing, all the apps have to be reinstalled from scratch.

I think parallels moves the whole lot over but you may have to re-enter product keys etc.

How much data is on the Windows install? You don't really want to leave yourself with zero space on the iMac. I would run windows disk cleanup by right click run as administrator, tick to remove old service packs, update cleanup as well as the temp folders etc. on the top tab delete all the old system restore points. Google TFC bleeping computer and run that from the desktop as admin also. Hopefully that will lean it up as much as possible before you migrate.

If space is tight still consider replacing the hard drive in the iMac with a fresh one. Been using seagate 3.5 SSHD drives recently and they perform pretty good for a replacement.

Then after migration to parallels you could always reformat the ntfs drive for time machine backups.

 

[Nermal]

You don't need to "import" from the drive; just plug it in and launch VMware and it'll have an option to run directly from the drive (you'll have an entry called "Boot Camp" in the library window; it doesn't matter that it's a "pure" Windows drive).

 

[eyeangle]

You don't need to "import" from the drive; just plug it in and launch VMware and it'll have an option to run directly from the drive (you'll have an entry called "Boot Camp" in the library window; it doesn't matter that it's a "pure" Windows drive).

I've tried this and it gives the error "Could not create the virtual disk for your Boot Camp virtual machine."

I've looked for some help on the vmware website and found this: "Make sure you have the appropriate permissions both to open (that is, read) and to write to your Boot Camp metadata."

from here:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/mi...nguage=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1027853

So I think this has something to do with the drive being NTFS??

Do you think if I bought an app like Paragon NTFS (allows write on NTFS drives) it'll work?

Do I need to install Win7 on a small partition first?

 

[satcomer]

I'm getting rid of my 5 years old PC in place of an 2008 iMac I was recently given second hand. I took the hard drive out of the PC and now I want to boot into it using Boot Camp. Is this possible or do I need Parallels Desktop 9? The PC hard drive is 500GB NTSF and the mac is 320GB.

I'm not going to re-install Windows on a new hard drive, it's not worth it, it has years of history on it and programs etc. I don't want to start it all again...

The reason I'd prefer Boot Camp is because I can give all the power of the iMac directly to Windows7 without running two operating systems at the same time, thus slowing it down.

How are connecting to this hard drive? Is it Thunderbolt or eSATA? This is the only way Windows would boot from an external is through one of these ports.

 

[Nermal]

So I think this has something to do with the drive being NTFS??

Do you think if I bought an app like Paragon NTFS (allows write on NTFS drives) it'll work?

No. I don't have any third-party NTFS software and it works for me. I'm not sure what to suggest

 

[tymaster50]

Personally, I would go for BootCamp, unless you have the specs to run it, parallels is a little.. sluggish. especially running windows 8, and it is more expensive. Only thing is you don't have to reboot your whole pc when you want to switch OS'es.

 

[eyeangle]

It's quite complicated. I found out how to do it posting on the vmware forums. If anyone else ever wants to do it here is the solution:

https://communities.vmware.com/message/2336015