Receiving an error after attempt to boot

I am sitting here, trying to set up bootcamp on an external hard drive (I know Apple doesn’t want you to install on an external hard drive but I want to anyway). I set up bootcamp normally, partitioned the disk, and it works fine. Then I used winclone to clone the normal bootcamp volume onto the external drive which was formatted to exfat using disk utility. I have tried switching between EFI and Legacy bootable, the efi returns the error “no bootable drive found, insert disk and press any key” or something like that, and the legacy doesn’t return anything, but gives me the underscore a small flash and repeats that cycle forever. Does anyone have any Idea how I can make this work?

what year and type of mac is it? if it doesn’t boot windows in EFI mode (older macs or Windows 7), then I have not seen external booting work reliably.

tim

Here is the link to the computer I have: https://support.apple.com/kb/SP653?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_US. The computer boots the normal bootcamp perfectly, but something happens when I copy it over to the external drive. Please tell me if you have any work around to this problem

This is also a seagate Backup plus 5 terabyte and uses usb 3.

The MacBook Pro 2012 is a great Mac, and I had one for many years. It was right at the time of the transition between Windows booting legacy and EFI and external booting has been problematic with it. If it doesn’t work and you want a refund, go here:

https://twocanoes.com/refunds/

tim

Does this mean that it is a problem with the computer, or a problem with the drive? Because I have another IMac that is much newer that I can use.

yes, try that. It is not a problem with the computer, but the combination of the version of Windows and how the mac boots it.

tim