Install Only Windows on New 13" Macbook Pro

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pirivan

Limp Gawd
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Feb 22, 2009
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First, let me thank everyone in advance for any replies; it is much appreciated. Also, to start with, I know, I know, Windows on Mac, why don't you run OSX instead, why buy a Mac if you want to run Windows etc. etc. I prefer Windows the OS and love Mac hardware (unparalleled in terms aesthetics in my opinion, I love Windows on my current Macbook Air) of so I'm already set in my plan.

So, my primary question is, for the new Retina 13" Macbook Pro I purchased, is it possible to ONLY install Windows on the drive and completely wipe out the OSX partition and only boot directly into Windows?

Also, if I do this, is it still in any way possible to apply Mac firmware updates from within Windows without an OSX partition? Can you download them and run them from some kind of preboot environment or something? I am just trying to come up with any 'consequences' that I can think of about completely wiping away the OSX partition.

If I CAN'T completely remove the OSX partition (or if there is no other way to install FW updates), what is the absolute smallest that I can make the OSX partition for Mavericks?
 
pirivan said:
So, my primary question is, for the new Retina 13" Macbook Pro I purchased, is it possible to ONLY install Windows on the drive and completely wipe out the OSX partition and only boot directly into Windows?
Click to expand...

Yup. Just remove the HFS partition after setting the Windows partition as active/primary boot. Don't do this though unless you don't care about battery life at all. The machine's battery life is completely annihilated by running windows in Boot Camp. The Windows drivers for Boot Camp are poor quality in general, so you'll probably want to leave OS X alone just so you have a reliable fallback OS with solid battery life.

pirivan said:
Also, if I do this, is it still in any way possible to apply Mac firmware updates from within Windows without an OSX partition? Can you download them and run them from some kind of preboot environment or something? I am just trying to come up with any 'consequences' that I can think of about completely wiping away the OSX partition.
Click to expand...

Nope. You need OS X on there to install firmware updates.
 
CEpeep said:
Yup. Just remove the HFS partition after setting the Windows partition as active/primary boot. Don't do this though unless you don't care about battery life at all. The machine's battery life is completely annihilated by running windows in Boot Camp. The Windows drivers for Boot Camp are poor quality in general, so you'll probably want to leave OS X alone just so you have a reliable fallback OS with solid battery life.



Nope. You need OS X on there to install firmware updates.
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Ah okay, I figured as much. How small can I make the OSX partition at a minimum just so that I can install FW updates?

Also, yes, totally, absolutely fine on battery life. I run the Macbook Air in Windows 7 exclusively and I've never been bothered by the battery life. Even further, this machine will be 'docked' on a desk 90% of the time so the time 'on battery' will be extremely limited.
 
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I believe Mac OS supports booting of an OS from USB storage. So if you have a spare hard drive you could keep a copy of Mac OS there for the updates?

Note: This is just an idea, I have not done it or know it is actually possible :)
 
Also, the fan is constantly on when you're using Windows. (With my Retina 15", anyway.)
 
elneckio said:
I believe Mac OS supports booting of an OS from USB storage. So if you have a spare hard drive you could keep a copy of Mac OS there for the updates?

Note: This is just an idea, I have not done it or know it is actually possible :)
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Very interesting idea, I am going to look into that further! I might even be able to use a USB 3.0 flash drive or something.
 
I have a late 2011 MBP13, and when I installed windows without using Bootcamp, I had issues getting some of the devices to work, most annoyingly the sound device. So make sure you use bootcamp to initiate the install of Windows, in case they haven't fix that problem yet (or who knows maybe I just didn't hold my tongue right the first time).


Another thing is that the trackpad turns into a huge pain in the ass on Windows for me.
 
ryan_975 said:
I have a late 2011 MBP13, and when I installed windows without using Bootcamp, I had issues getting some of the devices to work, most annoyingly the sound device. So make sure you use bootcamp to initiate the install of Windows, in case they haven't fix that problem yet (or who knows maybe I just didn't hold my tongue right the first time).


Another thing is that the trackpad turns into a huge pain in the ass on Windows for me.
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Interesting, did you download the drivers for that model specifically from Apple? Isn't that all installing it with Bootcamp really does? The trackpad has been pretty much flawless for me on my bootcamped MBA but maybe I don't use it enough to really notice. If I am going to be using the laptop a lot I tend to get out a wireless mouse. No matter how good the trackpad, I still don't like 'em too much.

I'm starting to wonder if I should just give up on the 20-30GB of drive space and keep an OSX partition! My main reason for not wanting it was so that I could easily create a drive image of my Windows installation and restore it. I thought that having the mac partition there would really complicate matters in terms of doing an actual restore.
 
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pirivan said:
Interesting, did you download the drivers for that model specifically from Apple? Isn't that all installing it with Bootcamp really does? The trackpad has been pretty much flawless for me on my bootcamped MBA but maybe I don't use it enough to really notice. If I am going to be using the laptop a lot I tend to get out a wireless mouse. No matter how good the trackpad, I still don't like 'em too much.

I'm starting to wonder if I should just give up on the 20-30GB of drive space and keep an OSX partition! My main reason for not wanting it was so that I could easily create a drive image of my Windows installation and restore it. I thought that having the mac partition there would really complicate matters in terms of doing an actual restore.
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I think it something to do with Apple's incomplete EFI implementation, and Bootcamp enables a BIOS compatibility mode it seems. When I used Disk Utility to create the partition, I was able to install Windows, but had the device issues. So I wiped it clean and used Bootcamp to create the partition, but it wouldn't recognize my USB drive as the installation media. So I manually selected it during a reboot, and Windows gave me an error stating that it couldn't install to an MBR partition because it had booted up in EFI mode. So I had to burn a DVD that Bootcamp would recognize, and Windows installed fine when bootcamp initiated the install.
 
ryan_975 said:
I think it something to do with Apple's incomplete EFI implementation, and Bootcamp enables a BIOS compatibility mode it seems. When I used Disk Utility to create the partition, I was able to install Windows, but had the device issues. So I wiped it clean and used Bootcamp to create the partition, but it wouldn't recognize my USB drive as the installation media. So I manually selected it during a reboot, and Windows gave me an error stating that it couldn't install to an MBR partition because it had booted up in EFI mode. So I had to burn a DVD that Bootcamp would recognize, and Windows installed fine when bootcamp initiated the install.
Click to expand...

Very interesting. I am definitely planning to try a few setups before I really get any data onto the laptop to see if I can figure out what works/what doesn't. I may try the two following scenarios:

1. Create a bootable OSX installation on a 16GB-32GB USB 3.0 drive, wipe the entire MBP SSD and use Bootcamp FROM the bootable OSX installation to install Windows 8.1 on the entire Mac drive. If possible (if there are any) I may try to install a FW update while running off of the USB3.0 installation to see if it works. I will use this article to setup the bootable OSX USB3.0 drive: http://lifehacker.com/5926945/build-the-perfect-portable-powerful-mac-then-carry-it-in-your-pocket

2. Partition OSX to use as small of a portion of the drive as is reasonable, with space for updates etc. (30GB?) then use bootcamp and install 8.1 to take the other 200GB or so. Once I've done this I will try to get WHS 2011 to backup the 8.1 installation. Then I will simulate a drive failure by wiping the ENTIRE SSD, do an internet based recovery (or use a Mavericks USB stick that I build), repartition the drive in the same way with bootcamp and then attempt to restore the WHS2011 backup to the Windows partition. I can't find documentation of anyone doing this so I'd love to actually test/know that it will work. I'd love it if WHS2011 could just backup the ENTIRE SSD and restore OSX and Windows but that's probably wishful thinking.
 
evilsofa said:
He's not exaggerating about that, not even a little bit. Running Windows 8 on an Apple laptop reduces battery life by half.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/10/why-does-windows-have-terrible-battery-life.html
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Motherfuck, I just got my new 13" MBPr in the mail today and went this route because I assumed I could run Windows 7/8 on it in bootcamp. Wish I knew this battery BS last week...lol.

I'm not really ready to wipe out OSX completely either (seems problematic at best). :(

Is "Parallels Desktop 9" worth a damn (not that I wanted to use this)?
 
MasonD said:
Motherfuck, I just got my new 13" MBPr in the mail today and went this route because I assumed I could run Windows 7/8 on it in bootcamp. Wish I knew this battery BS last week...lol.

I'm not really ready to wipe out OSX completely either (seems problematic at best). :(

Is "Parallels Desktop 9" worth a damn (not that I wanted to use this)?
Click to expand...

Right, BUT, you need to really pay attention to this key line from the article linked:

"That's still very high—it's better than the Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A's 6 hours and the Samsung Series 7 Ultra's 5 hours—but it's only half the astronomical 14 hours + that the 13" MacBook Air is capable of. "

The point he's making is that OSX's power management, in general, is MUCH better than Windows with the same hardware. Compared to other Windows laptops, a MBA 13" with Windows on it does OK in terms of batter life. It's just compared to OSX that it's terrible. So, if you are considering getting a Windows ultrabook instead, you're not likely to gain a ton in battery life, it's already decent.

As far as Parallels goes I haven't used it really extensively on a day to day basis but it's pretty decent if you have the RAM to allocate to it and it can actually run some 3D applications which is impressive for a VM. However, in my opinion, would I really want to work on it as my PRIMARY workstation, hell no. It's good for 'Well I really like Outlook for Windows but I prefer OSX'. So you can run your Outlook application nicely in coherence mode and it integrates into OSX somewhat. I don't know of anyone that is sort of running the primary OS in it with the host OSX as just a virtualhost pretty much. I am sure someone else can speak to this much better than I can.
 
MasonD said:
Is "Parallels Desktop 9" worth a damn (not that I wanted to use this)?
Click to expand...

Yup, though I'd recommend VMWare Fusion over it, and Virtualbox is free/open source and enough for most users. Native-speed performance for many types of tasks in Linux and Windows guests in all 3 options.
 
MasonD said:
Motherfuck, I just got my new 13" MBPr in the mail today and went this route because I assumed I could run Windows 7/8 on it in bootcamp. Wish I knew this battery BS last week...lol.

I'm not really ready to wipe out OSX completely either (seems problematic at best). :(

Is "Parallels Desktop 9" worth a damn (not that I wanted to use this)?
Click to expand...

I have a 13" MBPr (2012) and Parallels 9 is so-so on it. It's fine if you are dealing with static stuff and basic processing, but trying to run anything intensive on it is just not going to work (one of the programs I was using was pretty bad speed wise).

Bootcamp is obviously quite a bit faster as it's native. If I had the 15" MBPr with 16GB I think Parallels would work quite a bit better, but I can't say for certain.
 
elneckio said:
I believe Mac OS supports booting of an OS from USB storage. So if you have a spare hard drive you could keep a copy of Mac OS there for the updates?

Note: This is just an idea, I have not done it or know it is actually possible :)
Click to expand...
It is possible, if you do some hackintosh, you will find the USB copy
 
here are some things that might help

1. you can install OS X to a USB drive and boot from it and run it as your primary OS. You don't even need a hard drive in your macbook. You plug the drive in, hold down Option as the computer boots, and select the drive you want to boot from. Easy as that.

2. You can now do the same thing with Windows 8.(x) x64. I think you can with Windows 7, too.

3. You can also install, boot, and use Windows from a GPT disk with an EFI partition instead of MBR

4. Use Parted Magic (linux) or Carbon Copy Cloner (OS X) or Time Machine (Apple) to backup your operating systems. You'll need to use something like Parted Magic to handle the NTFS partitions.

It doesn't make much sense to back up your Windows install to a partition on the same drive. If the drive fails you've lost both installs. If you are thinking of putting OS X on a second drive so you can put Windows on two partitions just put the backup on the 2nd drive instead.

None of this really matters. Firmware updates for OS X are few and far between so that they should not dictate how or whether you install an OS.


My advice is to partition your primary hard drive so that OS X has some room and Windows has some room. Make sure you install Windows as UEFI and not MBR/hybrid. Then take your second drive and partition it the same way. Clone the partitions to the USB drive with Parted Magic. All four partitions will now be viable to run from your macbook with the Option key. You can do incremental backups via Time Machine for OS X and whatever you want to use for Windows.


(I've used vmware, virtualbox, and parallels extensively. parallels is by far the best looking and currently fastest. none of them will be able to do anything with 3d very well regardless of memory amount)
 
@mihawk

Yeah, it looks like it is totally possible and actually fully supported by Apple (can be done via this article: http://lifehacker.com/5926945/build-the-perfect-portable-powerful-mac-then-carry-it-in-your-pocket)

@mope54

The feedback is much appreciated! After quite a bit of thought, I think I'm going to try to maintain the OSX partition to start with. It will most likely have 32GB or so for OSX -> the rest for Windows (out of a 256GB SSD). That way I can boot into OSX for FW updates and to use iMovie if I ever want to. 32GB isn't that much of a huge space sacrifice for my C: drive anyhow so I probably won't miss it.

Then once I have this setup (without installing anything, just in a test configuration) I will probably go with the test plan I outlined before.

I will try to get WHS 2011 to backup the 8.1 installation. Then I will simulate an SSD drive failure by wiping the ENTIRE SSD, then reinstall Mavericks, repartition the drive in the same way with bootcamp and finally attempt to restore the WHS2011 backup to the Windows partition I re-create in bootcamp.

Yeah, this backup/restore won't cover the OSX partition but I'm not too worried about that at all (it likely won't ever have absolutely anything on it besides a default software install with some updates). If I feel like it I might get a USB 3.0 key and do TimeMachine backups to that but I don't see much need.
 
In case anyone finds this thread in the future and wonders what I did, I thought I would provide an update even though I am not quite finished with the project.

First, after some thought, I abandoned the idea of installing OSX and 8.1 on the same SSD just for FW updates (I installed the available firmware update from OSX first). This was mostly due to backup concerns. The only solutions for REALLY backing up a drive partitioned like this involve taking the system completely offline which really doesn't work for me. Also, people that have done this (as far as I can tell) have seldom if EVER done a successful or easy restore.

So, I decided instead to purchase a USB 3.0 enclosure for a small SSD (60GB) that I will use internet recovery to install OSX fully onto. I will plug it in if/when I want to use OSX for something.

I next installed 8.1 on the MBA (used the entire drive) using a bootcamp installer I created in OSX and then attempted to use Windows Home Server 2011 to back it up. Suffice it to say that this was a mess/waste of time. I think that WHS 2011 just has some issues with Windows 8.1. Frankly, WHS 2011 is a platform that MS is leaving behind so I didn't spend much time troubleshooting why this I couldn't get a good backup or do a restore. I just decided that ultimately I need to stop using WHS2011 so there wasn't any point in investing further time in fixing it.

So, I ultimately settled on using the built in Windows Backup and backing up to a USB connected drive or likely a mapped network drive. For testing purposes I just used the USB drive for backups, not a network share.

Then, I first tried to install on the entire SSD using an 8.1 USB installer I built via the below steps. I know I skipped some specific details on how to perform each step, this is a bit of a general guide from my own notes.

How to create a 8GB USB key (instructions here -> Windows 8.1 installer) – FOR FUTURE REFERENCE I ULTIMATELY WENT WITH AN EFI BOOTED INSTALL NOT THIS METHOD
  1. Use this Windows 8.1 USB drive to completely wipe the Mac HD partitions and install Windows
  2. After 8.1 setup, I installed the MBP drivers from the bootcamp USB stick I had previously setup. You could also download them from the Apple website though the absolute LATEST bootcamp drivers that apply to the 2013 Retina 13" MBP are not up yet.
  3. Ran the following command in Powershell to create a scheduled backup task: SCHTASKS /Create /SC DAILY /TN DailyFullBackup /RL HIGHEST /ST 02:00 /TR “wbAdmin Start Backup -backupTargetD: -include:C: -allCritical -quiet”
    1. This creates a scheduled backup task running at 2:00AM and backing up to the D: drive.
    2. I edited the task afterwards in task scheduler to run whether user is logged on or not and set the task mode to windows 8.1
  4. To do a restore: You HAVE to boot off of an 8.1 USB key, then use diskpart etc. to completely wipe the SSD first before you can restore a complete PC backup to it
    1. Also, you may need to move around which USB port the drive that holds your restore image is on. It would error repeatedly even after wiping the SSD until I used the Windows System Image restore with the USB drive with the image on it plugged into a DIFFERENT USB port. Not sure why but that was the case
Then, I decided I would try the same thing except using EFI via the following instructions.

How to setup a 4-8GB USB key for 8.1 EFI
  1. http://rufus.akeo.ie/ -> Download the tool/application here and plugin your USB flash drive
  2. Launch the program. Since it’s portable, you can simply just download and run it.
  3. Check the option “Create a bootable disk using: ISO Image“, and click the icon next to it to select your 8.1 ISO
  4. Select “GPT partition scheme for UEFI computer“.
  5. Before you click Start button, check to make sure the settings are the same as the screenshot displayed the rufus tool site.
Then once the EFI installer was built I attempted to do a reinstall of 8.1 using EFI and to then attempt a backup/restore. Again, I know I skipped some specific details on how to perform each step, this is a bit of a general guide from my own notes.

How to install Windows 8.1 EFI and do a complete PC backup/restore
  1. Built USB installer specifically for EFI via the steps above
  2. Ran the installation, deleted all existing partitions and let 8.1 install onto the entire unallocated drive and partition as necessary
  3. Booted into windows and ran bcdedit /enum to check if it was booted to EFI
    1. The output will have an entry like winload.efi NOT winload.exe (.exe is MBR)
  4. Install bootcamp drivers from a bootcamp built install USB drive or DL them from Apple
  5. Powershell: SCHTASKS /Create /SC DAILY /TN DailyFullBackup /RL HIGHEST /ST 02:00 /TR “wbAdmin Start Backup -backupTarget:D: -include:C: -allCritical -quiet”
    1. Run this command in powershell to create a scheduled backup task running at 2:00AM and backing up to the D: drive.
    2. Edit the task afterwards to run whether user is logged on or not and configure for windows 8.1
  6. To do a restore: You HAVE to boot off of the 8.1 EFI USB key you created early and used for the OS install (cannot be MBR)
    1. I had not issues with the restore. I didn't have to unplug anything or wipe the drive first with diskpart etc. it just worked.
 
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