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I'm interested in buying the new 2011 Mac Mini. I want it because of the hardware. I can't seems to find a comparable PC that is as fast, small and quiet. I don't care for Mac OS X at all.

Is it possible to install Windows 7 Ultimate on the mac on a fresh empty hdd from a usb drive?

Can the mac boot from an external USB HDD that has Windows already installed on it?

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I've been googling and so far I can't find instruction to install windows without boot camp. As far as I know mac doesn't have BIOS like the one on pc. – tjipz8 Aug 5 '11 at 3:34
Doh! Macs use EFI, but don't implement the right bits that Windows 7 requires for booting. – afrazier Aug 5 '11 at 3:59
possible duplicate of Installing Windows 7 (64 bit) on a Mac Pro without Boot Camp? – afrazier Aug 5 '11 at 3:59
yeah but it doesn't really answer my question. The vista instruction require cd/dvd to install windows, how about usb drives? since the mini doesn't have cd/dvd drives and I don't want to buy external drives just to install windows. – tjipz8 Aug 5 '11 at 4:16
Why? I seriously can't think of any reason why you'd rather use windows! – Rich Bradshaw Aug 5 '11 at 7:34
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You'll need a new boot loader in that case. And it looks like you'll need to convert the drive to GPT unless you install a custom bootloader like GRUB.

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the instruction require disc – tjipz8 Aug 5 '11 at 4:45
can anybody confirm this will work on mac, since as far as i know mac efi implementation is a bit different – tjipz8 Aug 5 '11 at 6:14
You only have to boot it past the boot manager. In a sense, your current bootloader won't boot up in EFI. But the Windows 7 efi bootloader won't boot Mac OSX. So you'll need to either A) get a custom bootloader or B) replace the Windows 7 bootloader with the EFI version and then add an entry to the Mac OS X bootloader to point to that bootloader. – surfasb Aug 5 '11 at 6:29
I think there is misunderstanding here, the hdd will be fresh empty. Is the mac bios/efi able to boot my windows 7 installation usb flash drives ? – tjipz8 Aug 5 '11 at 13:23
You posted that the External already has Win 7 installed. Yes, the OSX is capable of booting the Win7 boot loader. – surfasb Aug 5 '11 at 15:43
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