MacBook – How to set up windows so its possible to boot non Apple laptops from it

bootcampmacbook prossdwindows

I have an old Macbook and a new Windows laptop. I want to install Windows 7 on the Mac's Samsung 850 EVO SSD so that its possible to use it on both Macbook and the Windows laptop.

Is such a thing possible?
If yes, how does one do that?

Here's why I need to do this. (feel free to skip this)

The (2008) Macbook is my personal laptop but Windows one is for work. I want to avoid using work laptop if possible. I'm taking classes for professional exams and my LMS software is compatible with only windows. The institute is basically being a **** and is saying if my mac's logic board gives out (which I think it might), I need to pay about $200 extra since its not possible to generate a new key or something like that.

So I need to be able to just plug in the samsung SSD in a windows laptop so that its ready to use. I have exams in 3 months.

Best Answer

Apart from the fact that you'd have to ring Microsoft to reinstate your licence every time you swapped, Windows is not very good at swapping hardware.

A Mac drive can be used to boot any Mac older than the OS on the drive; Windows doesn't work that way, you'd need a bare-metal clone & install the correct drivers every time.

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MacBook – Upgrading to SSD on 2010 MBP

re 1: hard to say - if you can spare the Money you should go for the 850 bc. of a (probably) better Garbage Collection (see #3), else go for the 840.

re 2: The best tutorial for replacing the optical drive with a harddrive (or SSD) can be found at iFixit.com, f.e. this one. You should search for the Tutorial for your model, the link i posted is probably not for your model.

re 3: There is a hot discussion going on if Trim should be enabled or not and if that is a bad thing. Fact is, Apple has Trim Support enabled only on its own OEM SSDs and disabled it for third party drive. There are Tools to enable TRIM Support, but it could be a not necessary bc. of a better Garbage Collection within the SSD Firmware (see this article and this Article). For general Infos i recommend this Article from Samsung

BTW, to create a homemade Fusion Drive you need to use the 'Core Storage Volume' Command. You can look it up with

man diskutil

look at the 'coreStorage' section. There are some tutorials for creating a homemade Fusion Drive, but it's a very painful process.

MacOS – Why can’t I mount a Samsung SSD 850 EVO

I have the exact same problem and to the best I can tell, it's the chipset used in the OWC Mercury Elite Pro minis. Very disappointing.

My 500GB 840 EVO works fine in these enclosures, but I've bought and returned two 850 EVOs thinking they were DOA. Suspicious after the second one, I spoke with Samsung support on 5/12/15. The rep immediately acknowledged my problem, said the Pro series does not have this problem, and that they're working on a firmware update to fix the 850 EVOs for use in external enclosures. He had no idea when that update would come though. I called back today (7/29/15) for an update, rep was mildly rude, said there will never be an update, and that our only option was Samsung's new USB3 external drives (which are 850 EVOs internally).

OWC support (7/29/15) says they do not test Samsung SSDs in any of their enclosures. Their own Mercury SSDs will work, but are not tested above the 480GB capacity.

In short, try a different enclosure.

Best Answer

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