I'm trying to install Windows (either 7 or 8) on a LaCie 1TB external SSD attached to a MacBook Pro. The LaCie drive comes as 2 512GB SSDs in a raid 0 (a.k.a. striped) which I assumed added an extra layer of complexity to the problem so I'm trying now to get windows going on just one of the 512GB SSDs and will use the other for video editing. I'm fairly certain from other posts that I've read that it is necessary to have a small MS-DOS (fat32) or NTFS partition on the internal SSD which I have created. Currently I'm trying the method of using a Bootcamp-created Windows installation on an 8GB USB. The wall I have hit is that, although the installer will recognise and even format the external SSD, it won't install to it because it lacks the necessary driver. Does anyone have any other avenues of investigation into a successful installation on a setup such as this?
h t t p://w w w.lacie.com/support/drivers/driver.htm?id=10278 Thunderbolt Driver Windows Rugged h t t p://w w w.lacie.com/support/drivers/driver.htm?id=10279 Thunderbolt Driver Windows d2 These are a couple Thunderbolt drivers for windows that I found on Lacie's website. I would try using those during install and see if that works. Thunderbolt is basically an external version of a 4× PCI Express 2.0 slot and so Windows would see the SSD as a internal pci-e SSD with the provided drivers but I am not 100% sure as I haven't had any experience with thunderbolt devices yet. I do know you can run OS X from a thunderbolt drive and it shows up as an internal SATA device or raid array in that os.
Hi Kraz3D, Thank you for replying to my post. It is much appreciated. Life stepped in after my initial post and it has taken me this long to get back to trying to get Windows installed to my LittleBigDisk - so sorry not to have checked back sooner. Both of the above links are for the same driver in fact and I had tried to extract the drivers from it in a VM so that I could load those drivers prior to installation - no luck though, it's designed as an installer to be run in windows, rather than drivers that can be loaded to install windows. I also found a similar link for drivers in the downloads section specific to my drive: h t t p://w w w.lacie.com/ie/support/drivers/driver.htm?id=10281 which is this one, by the way: h t t p://w w w.lacie.com/ie/products/product.htm?id=10549 You seem to know a good bit more than I do about the hardware issues here so I would be very grateful for your continued help, if you can give it.