Solved USB/DVD Download Tool won't recognize my external HD

[kita]

My external USB HD (I-O Data HDPS-U portable 500GB) that I wanna boot from to setup bootcamp on a mac will not be recognized by the USB/DVD download tool in my Parallels Windows 7. I can only select "A:\ (PRL) - 1.2MB Free". The program will recognize my USB thumb drive, but it's not big enough. Windows itself does recognize the external HD but the USB/DVD tool does not. This is all being done through mac 10.7.4. Any thoughts? This may require a broad range of experience to solve, so have at it ya'll.

 

[DeaconFrost]

It isn't a flash drive or a DVD drive, so it shouldn't be recognized. That tool is used for making bootable install media, not as a destination for the installed OS. Besides, if it is a USB device, you aren't going to be running a Windows OS from it anyway, so you'd be wasting your time in the long run.

 

[kita]

Thanks. Sorry, my terms were maybe not clear. I want to make the external HD bootable so I can then install windows onto my mac. The mac has no disc drive so I just need a way to boot from an external source for the install. Are you saying that only small flash drives will work for this, but not larger hard drives?

 

[DeaconFrost]

It has nothing to do with the size of the drive...but the type. A 4 GB flash drive can be had for a few bucks, so if you want to install Windows to a computer without an optical drive, that's your best bet.

 

[jumanji]

Hi kita,

Check whether this article helps, if you are still keen on installing from a bootable HDD for whatever reason.

 

[kita]

That article unpacks the iso file, but Bootcamp wants to boot from it still in iso form. i guess I'll have to buy a flash drive. I didn't realize SSD versus HDD would matter. Thanks all.