Alternative to Bootcamp?

shifty_uk · 4 Apr 2008 at 17:50

It seems after the release of Leopard, the Boot camp 'beta' ceased to exist. I'm still running os x but would like an alternative to boot camp. Something that allows a dual boot rather than within a window.

A free alternative would be even nicer.

Slogan · 4 Apr 2008 at 18:19

shifty_uk said:
Something that allows a dual boot rather than within a window.

I'm confused by that.

kvfb97 · 4 Apr 2008 at 18:29

Bootcamp isn't in a window...

FreeStream · 4 Apr 2008 at 18:41

Erm, just get Leopard?

There is nothing else apart from Bootcamp :/

mdjmcnally · 4 Apr 2008 at 18:50

Unless you are still running Tiger then Bootcamp is party of leopard and so an upgrade to leopard gets you bootcamp full product.

I though parallels, vmware fusion etc just allowed you to run Windows in a window of your OSX, not boot natively into Windows.

Tom84 · 4 Apr 2008 at 19:06

vaultingSlinky said:
Parallels?

That's what I'll be using when my MBP arrives

FreeStream · 4 Apr 2008 at 19:17

Seeing as he has said "dual boot and not in a window"

Leopard is the only way he can go.

shifty_uk · 4 Apr 2008 at 19:50

Didn't mean to cause any confusion. I meant I didn't want XP to run within a window, I wanted an option to boot separately....Like boot camp provides.

Didn't realise boot camp was the only available application that provided a dual boot.

Thanks anyway!

MagicBoy · 4 Apr 2008 at 23:40

What's wrong with Boot Camp? It's free and comes built into Leopard on Intel boxes.

No need for something else...

Slogan · 5 Apr 2008 at 00:23

MagicBoy said:
What's wrong with Boot Camp? It's free and comes built into Leopard on Intel boxes.

You can't use Boot Camp at all if you have a raid setup.
You can't partition a non-startup drive and install Boot Camp on one of the partitions.

It needs competition as those are annoying problems.

MagicBoy · 5 Apr 2008 at 00:32

Fair points. Not exactly what the OP was suggesting however

I'd dearly love to be able to boot XP from an external firewire drive... Got a nice 7k laptop drive here in a caddy ready and waiting...

FreeStream · 5 Apr 2008 at 00:48

MagicBoy said:
Fair points. Not exactly what the OP was suggesting however

I'd dearly love to be able to boot XP from an external firewire drive... Got a nice 7k laptop drive here in a caddy ready and waiting...

But on a PC you can't boot from a USB/Firewire/eSATA HD so why on a mac?

TBH I'd make a 20Gb Partition then get a eSATA card + 2.5" enclosure + 7200RPM for everything else and the pagefile... be quicker than a single external HD too.

MagicBoy · 5 Apr 2008 at 01:00

Intel Macs don't have the legacy crap associated with a PC Clone BIOS - they use EFI. It's certainly possible from the Windows end as I had a friend who reloaded his PC and accidentally installed Windows on his iPod!

I had a similar setup when I first used Boot Camp a couple of years ago - 8Gb OS partition, everything else on the 7k drive via Firewire. Worked OK. eSATA is quick, but the cabling gets messy on an MBP.

electric ant · 5 Apr 2008 at 12:00

OK since no-one else has mentioned it
for a free open source alternative to Bootcamp there is rEfit

http://refit.sourceforge.net/

However if you want simplicity, just get leopard and use bootcamp.