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I am using MBP 2015 running Mojave I need Win 10 for quite limited operations like to use browser for establish connection to remote server or etc. It works only on Win hence I need Win 10. There are a few options to have second OS on Mac but I would prefer to use USB drive. I used to run Linux from USB on my former Windows laptop with no issue hence I thought I could do similar from MBP. Any advice? Thanks

susik
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  • You can install Windows on USB drive. Let's look [here](https://superuser.com/questions/1586293/run-win-10-from-usb-drive). – Login Sep 17 '20 at 10:31
  • You cannot legally run Windows 10 from an external drive, and the OS is deliberately designed so that cannot happen. Linux has no such problems. You could try installing a properly licensed copy of Windows 10 as a virtual machine using Virtualbox or VMWare. – Michael Harvey Sep 17 '20 at 10:35
  • @Login, that link leads back to this thread. – Michael Harvey Sep 17 '20 at 10:36
  • https://superuser.com/questions/1526015/boot-virtualbox-vm-from-usb-on-macos – harrymc Sep 17 '20 at 10:55
  • There’s [Windows To Go](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/planning/windows-to-go-overview). It requires Windows 10 Enterprise/Education and a qualified USB flash drive. // Also, why not use a VM? – Daniel B Sep 17 '20 at 11:40
  • I do have legal copy of Win 10. I used VirtualBox before. It was very inconvenient because it took too much resources and bad performance. In case it won't work from USB I'm thinking of Boot Camp – susik Sep 17 '20 at 23:41
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    @MichaelHarvey Where are you getting your info from, as it's factually inaccurate. Windows can be installed to a USB drive, it's simply not recommended since Windows isn't intended to be run from a USB drive. Unlike BSD/Linux, which often loads itself into RAM when booting from a USB drive, Windows will not, so the user takes the risk bumping the drive could crash the OS with little ability to recover any open projects. USB drives also usually have lower quality flash, resulting in much quicker churn if used regularly to boot Windows due to the constant writes by the OS. – JW0914 Sep 20 '20 at 03:07
  • @JW0914 "Where are you getting your info from[?]" - Microsoft Windows EULA "2. Installation and Use Rights. a. License. The software is licensed, not sold. Under this agreement, we grant you the right to install and run one instance of the software on your device (the licensed device) [...] b. Device. In this agreement, “device” means a hardware system (whether physical or virtual) with an **internal storage device** capable of running the software." – Michael Harvey Sep 20 '20 at 08:02
  • @MichaelHarvey You're fundamentally misunderstanding the EULA terms: **(1)** Re-read the EULA, specifically the last sentence of 2.b _'A hardware partition or blade is considered to be a device."_ - there is no provision within the EULA that restricts install to a HDD/SSD _(USB drive is a "device", which has internal storage)_; **(2)** 2.b states Windows can only be installed to a host _with_ internal storage, not that the install must be on the internal storage - there's a fundamental difference; **(3)** By definition, VMs have no physical internal storage, so there's also that inference. – JW0914 Sep 20 '20 at 09:16

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Thanks for your suggestions Finally I decided to go with boot camp and installed it. The only concern left is that my hard drive is 120 Gb and ~60 Gb were available. During boot camp install process it allocated 37 Gb for Windows and did not give me the option to resize. Hence I have Windows 10 running on 37 Gb partition with ~13 Gb available. For now it runs fine. My question: could I leave it 'as is'? Thanks

susik
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