MacBook – How to let MacBook Pro recognize the external hard drive as internal hard drive

bootcampexternal-diskhard drivemacbook pro

I'd like to install Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro, but as the internal hard drive cable is not working, I'm using it with an external hard drive plugged in which OS X is installed on.

When I try to install Windows 7 it says that I have to have an internal hard drive to install it. So I'm just wondering if there is a way that can make my laptop think that the external hard drive is an internal so I could install Windows, or is there any other way to install Windows?

I don't want to install Windows in a Virtual Machine.

Best Answer

You should be able to do this with dd by setting Removable to False.

Unmount your disk, then run…

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk2 bs=1 count=1

Don't forget to replace disk2 with the actual disk identifier. This command will erase the contents of the disk. Untested, be careful, usual 'not responsible if stuff goes wrong' applies :)