bootcamp & external drives .. any change?

[simonm]

A couple of questions:

1). Last time I checked, bootcamp needs a partition on the boot drive. Has this changed?

What I would like to try is putting the HD from my Dell laptop into an external case and seeing if I could use windows that way with all my applications already installed.

2). Can you simply use dd or ghost to clone a working windows set-up to a bookcamp partition (or to a VMware/Parallels "disk") and have it work?

I was thinking that maybe I could clone my work laptop that way. If vmware etc would let me put my mac on the Dull, that would work too - I just want to separate work and personal stuff as completely as possible. The idea behind the questions is to see if I could leave my Dull at home when I travel for work (quite a bit) and bring an MBP instead so that I have my own stuff for after work. I'd like to do this with the least effort possible.

If Apple's updates didn't keep breaking both the citrix ica client and the cisco vpn client (neither work for me at the moment in leopard and the ica is broken in Tiger for me) then I could actually work that way. (Blame Cisco and Citrix for not keeping up to date if you prefer ;-)).

[Jimmypoo]

I remember there being a function for Parallels to copy an existing boot drive (it's been 2 years....) so surely there must be a way to just copy your boot drive to a BootCamp partition, provided it is XP-2 or greater. It just makes sense.

Does VMWare permit virtualization of the Mac on ANYTHING?

Also... if we can technically run this thing as a pure pc, then wouldn't booting it from an external drive count? I'd like to see comments from others who've messed with it. I've done no more than create the VMWare file, compress it, and when I want to use it, the 250MB file expands to a Virtual Drive containing 1.5GB of XP sp2 crap. When I'm done using it, I either toss the expanded drive, OR recompress it, and toss the PREVIOUS compressed drive.

That way it takes up virtually no room, and I don't need a partition wasting space.

With what you do, is the "hit" really so great that you notice a difference in performance?
One day, If I don't find side by side benchmarks of "with VMWare in Leopard...vs. Direct Boot" - I'll get around to trying it.

[M A V I C]

2. Just as much a you can from one PC to another. If the hardware is identical, it should work fine, but I highly doubt your work laptop's hardware is the same as whatever Mac you want to copy it to.

[simonm]

[quote Jimmypoo]

Does VMWare permit virtualization of the Mac on ANYTHING?
Yes. On MacOSX server you can run virtual macs on the mac server. I don't recall where I saw it but it was announced sometime back.