Quick question regarding 2011 MBP. Optical Swap with HD and installing windows.

blueeddieblueeddie
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited September 2014

Now that my 2011 MBP is officially out of warranty, I'm thinking of swapping my optical drive out for a hard drive. I've done this before but there were always problems. My question is, is there an easy way for solely installing windows on a HD and OSX on my main SSD, then dual booting? 

 

When I first attempted this, I found out that I could not install windows on a hard drive when it was placed in the optical drive slot (upper left), only when I swapped the hard drive with my ssd slot (lower left). Not quite sure if it was because I can't install windows on an HD (in the optical drive upper right slot) with a bootable USB. But I had to remove my SSD in order to put in my HD (lower left slot) and then install via a bootable CD using an optical drive (internally). Hope what I said makes sense....

 

Now that swapping OD with another SSD/HD is pretty common, is there an easier way to independently install windows on a separate HD using my mac? If I installed windows onto a hard drive with a PC, then swap it with my optical drive, will my mac be able to boot it (and have bootcamp running smoothly)?

 

Info:

Mac is on Mavericks 10.9.4

Windows that I'm trying to install is Windows 7

 

Thanks for your help :)

 

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