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I have a macbook pro running os x lion and would like to play some windows xp games (grand thef auto san andreas, etc). Through vmware fusion or parallels it is quite slow and my disk is full so bootcamp is neither a good solution for me (at least until I clean the disk).

So I wonder if I could install windows xp in an external 32G USB stick, so when my mac boots, I can select it and boots xp to run games. My two main concerns are:

a) is it possible?
b) given this is an usb stick, will there be some performance loss due to the usb data speed transfer?
c) the most critical: can this xp installation damage my mac partition?

Otherwise, can you suggest another solution having in mind specially point c)?

PS: condition b) can be relaxed or avoided

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If you have external storage media, just move some of your stuff to them to make space for a Windows partition? – Daniel Beck Dec 13 '11 at 8:20
I can not do that since I need all my stuff permanently while I am mobile – flow Dec 13 '11 at 8:46
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(b) If 'some performance loss' means 'huge' then yes. – HaydnWVN Dec 13 '11 at 12:01
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32G USB Stick is not going to be large enough for Windows XP, and even if this were an option ( it really isn't ) it would have horrible performance. Why don't you just get a bigger internal HDD? Just clone it, yank the current drive out, and shove the new larger drive back in. – Ramhound Dec 13 '11 at 12:59
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