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yet another Macbook questions thread :thumbdown

post #1 of 9
5/10/06 at 7:46pm
Thread Starter 
Just wondering can boot camp be used to put XP on an external HDD because if I do get a Macbook Pro I would like to have a little bit more protection than a partition if XP just crashes and I have to reinstall.
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post #2 of 9
5/10/06 at 8:20pm
There's virtually no way that Windows crashing can take down the Mac OS partition. Even if something does happen, using the Disk Utility programme on the OS X install disks should fix any problems.

As far as installing on an external drive...I believe it's possible but I'm not sure.
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post #3 of 9
5/10/06 at 11:21pm
Caffeine,

Kakaze is right, there is really no way what you fear can occur.

Also, XP is a pretty stable OS so why it would crash is a good question in and of itself. I have been using it since beta and have never had a crash.
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post #4 of 9
5/11/06 at 1:40am
Thread Starter 
I know, I know, just an idea my brother told me to try out if I do get one so that I can not make my mac unclean. He's a mac zealot.


anywho thanks for the help you'll both be receiving rep for it tomorrow

EDIT: I had told him it would be a bad idea because external HDD as the main drive for an OS especially in USB 2.0 is slow, at least it seems that way.
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post #5 of 9
5/11/06 at 6:26pm
Firewire is great for external drives.
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post #6 of 9
5/12/06 at 1:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kakaze
Firewire is great for external drives.


BUT NOT IN WINDOWS!!!!!

I don't know the specifics of it, but after buying an external enclosure and slapping a new 320gb hd in it, I had problems with firewire. Got about 100gb on it then became corrupted and the file system dissapeared. I read that windows treats firewire as a 'network' device and firewalls it. Needless to say, I don't touch the firewire plug on the external enclosure anymore. I can attest that it WAS faster, however. While it worked, that is.

EDIT: Luckily, i hadn't deleted everything off my computer yet. I lost some stuff, i was pissed about, but not the whole 100gb. Happened to me twice before i figured out what it was. :/
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post #7 of 9
5/12/06 at 5:32pm
Firewire is the choice for external drives in Windows as well as OS X. I don't know why you had a problem but I've rarely heard of problems with firewire drives in Windows and I've certainly never heard about Windows treating them as network devices. I know you can do firewire networking between computers in Windows—in OS X as well—but Windows generally knows the difference between a harddrive and another computer.
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post #8 of 9
5/13/06 at 1:10am
Windows XP has a bug in its Firewire driver that causes speed issues. I was told they were working on a patch but the one they issued didnt work right or something like that. I havent paid to much attention as I dont use firewire on my wife's computer which is the only one of mine I keep on Windows anymore.

It is POSSIBLE to for a virus in windows to screw up a computer to the extent to damage a Mac OS install, however it is not likely. There have been virii like this in the past, but following common sense and conservative computing greatly reduces the already slim chance as very few virii are written with the technical ability required to screw with lower level hardware.

Seablade
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post #9 of 9
5/13/06 at 1:12am
By the way if doing external drives, FW800 is strongly reccomended, or eSATA. Both will be MUCH faster than USB2.0 or FW400. If in windows I would reccomend researching the firewire driver and see if they ever fixed that bug which was likely causing some of the problems you were having, and then feel free to try it again(With a drive that oyu dont have to worry about data corruption of course

Seablade
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