I have a 2017 iMac 27" with a 3tb fusion drive and my external storage is a 500GB Samsung X5. I have successfully installed boot camp on my iMac, ran all boot camp drivers, and then updated windows 10 pro. From there I created an image of my boot camp volume with Winclone 8.1. I then restored the image to my Samsung X5. I shut down my Mac, booted to startup manager and chose the X5. Then pops up the windows logo and the spinning circle on the screen. Eventually the screen goes to black but if I move the mouse I can see the cursor.I have tested this with legacy startup and it doesn’t recognize the startup drive. I only get the option to boot to the X5 with a EFI boot.
Is there something I am missing here? What recommendations or information do you need?
So you got Windows to boot but there is a driver conflict. Try running sysprep prior to creating the image and restoring it. It will force Windows to scan the hardware for changes.
One small problem I ran into was “extracting file data” stuck at 90% overnight where the image wouldn’t restore to the tb3 ssd. The disk was formatted as MSDOSFAT, I ended up formatting as exFat and attempted a 2nd time and it worked right away.
I had the exact same problem so I tried running SYSPREP and it failed immediately. It turns out that there’s a bug in the latest release (Windows 10 build 1909). The only workaround people have found is to pull files from an earlier build which I don’t have access to and which Microsoft strongly advises against.
Winclone is an effective tool to backup and restore an existing BOOTCAMP installation. And it may work as advertised to migrate an internal BOOTCAMP installation to another Mac’s internal BOOTCAMP partition. But it is woefully inadequate in migrating an internal BOOTCAMP installation to an external SSD. I ended up using the free version of WinToUSB to install a fresh copy of Windows 10 Home to SanDisk Extreme 1 TB drive. WinToUSB support assured me that the full version ($30) was able to migrate my BOOTCAMP installation, but after my experiences with Winclone’s “ability” to do the same, I opted for the free and quick route. One caveat: WinToUSB installs “Windows To Go” which blocks access to the internal drive of the machine you boot it on even with the Bootcamp drivers installed. And finally, Winclone works fine in backing up and restoring my SanDisk installation.
Did you ever get this to work? I have an Samsung X5 external SSD that I would like to migrate my Win10 partition (iMac Retina 5K 2019) to. I have searched the forum and have not seen a definitive answer (It may be there, I just couldn’t find it).