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I know there is lot's of guides out there on the net, but I havn't really found a good one which explains step by step how it works :/ For that reason I hope some of you guys could give me some pointers...

I'm currently using a MacBook Pro for developing webpages, but I need Internet Explorer in order to optimize for all browsers. Therefore I tried installing Windows on my MacBook using BootCamp, but unfortunately I don't have space enough on my harddrive to do so. As a result of that I'm looking for an alternative...

I've read that it should be possible to install Windows on an external harddrive using Parallels - is that true? If yes, do you have a step-by-step guide on how to do so? And is it important which kind of external harddrive it is?

If it's possible, I would also like to know how it works after installing. Can you just plugin your external harddrive and switch to windows desktop using shortcuts or how does it work?

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Aug 5 '11 at 14:06

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A simple solution is installing vmware or VirtualBox on your mac and creating a new machine and putting its files on the external drive.

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How much space do it take to install vmware or VirtualBox on my mac? And is it easy to switch between external/windows and mac or do I have to reboot everytime? – Don Pedro Aug 5 '11 at 8:10
less than 100MB, it's not difficult and does not need to reboot everytime. – Maysam Aug 5 '11 at 8:12
But how much space does Windows installation then take? I guess this were the problem in BootCamp.. – Don Pedro Aug 5 '11 at 8:48
it depends, XP needs about 5GB, win7 needs 15GB – Maysam Aug 5 '11 at 8:52
I installed WIN7 on my macbook pro now.. But I can't access either "localhost"; or "localhost:8888/";, so how do I find the localhost from the VirtualBox Machine? – Don Pedro Aug 5 '11 at 10:05
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