Dual boot Yosemite on existing Windows 7

[AceLine]

Hi there, hi Forumianers,

I was searching for hours now to find information on installing OS X Yosemite onto Laptop with an existing Windows 7 installation. I found billions of tutorials and howtos on installing Yosemite on PC Hardware and also found tuts on creating multi boot Yosemite / Windows installations... BUT:

Could not find even one information on installing dual boot option to a laptop/pc with an existing Windows installation that must not get lost...!?

Can anybody help me to find out if the following scenario is possible at all and if yes, how to do it:

I've got a Dell Laptop Inspiron 17 7000-Series with one terrabyte hdd and Windows 7 installed on it. I worked for months on that Windows 7 and must not lose anything on it. So what I want to do is something like that:

1.) Parting the 1 TB Partition into two 500 GB Partitions
2.) Formating the non Windows Partition with Mac FS (journ.)
3.) Install Yosemite on it (using any tutorial with MultiBeast, etc.)
4.) Install and configure bootmanager to get control over os's on booting

Again: The existing Windows 7 installation / Partition must not get lost.

Is there any possibility on managing that?

Thnx. for your helpful reply and ideas...

Best regards, AceLine

 

[Going Bald]

Hi there, hi Forumianers,

I was searching for hours now to find information on installing OS X Yosemite onto Laptop with an existing Windows 7 installation. I found billions of tutorials and howtos on installing Yosemite on PC Hardware and also found tuts on creating multi boot Yosemite / Windows installations... BUT:

Could not find even one information on installing dual boot option to a laptop/pc with an existing Windows installation that must not get lost...!?

Can anybody help me to find out if the following scenario is possible at all and if yes, how to do it:

I've got a Dell Laptop Inspiron 17 7000-Series with one terrabyte hdd and Windows 7 installed on it. I worked for months on that Windows 7 and must not lose anything on it. So what I want to do is something like that:

1.) Parting the 1 TB Partition into two 500 GB Partitions
2.) Formating the non Windows Partition with Mac FS (journ.)
3.) Install Yosemite on it (using any tutorial with MultiBeast, etc.)
4.) Install and configure bootmanager to get control over os's on booting

Again: The existing Windows 7 installation / Partition must not get lost.

Is there any possibility on managing that?

Thnx. for your helpful reply and ideas...

Best regards, AceLine

Do you have another 2.5" laptop drive?
Do you have a SATA to USB adapter?
Is Win7 installed UEFI or Legacy?

Your steps above probably will not work. If you absolutely must install OS X on the laptop and the Win7 is installed Legacy on MBR, you can replace the Win7 HDD with a blank, install OS X on the blank, swap the drives, boot Win7, create your partition, format it NTFS, reboot with the external drive, and use CCC to clone your OS X to the Win7 drive partition you created.

 

[AceLine]

Hi Going Bald,

thnx. for your reply...

@Do you have another 2.5" laptop drive?
Yes, I do have... one naked to connect via SATA to USB adapter or an external 1 TB Seagate drive

@Do you have a SATA to USB adapter?
Yes, in deed. I have a SATA to USB adapter from DIGITUS

@Is Win7 installed UEFI or Legacy?
Windows 7 is installed Legacy - as I remember, the UEFI Mode was enabled for Windows 8.1 on that machine and I had to switch it to Legacy for Windows 7 installation

Do you think it would be possible to install OS X 10.10 just on an external USB drive, not to compromise Windows 7 drive at all and just connect the external drive to boot from it to OS X?

Thnx. again for your reply and for your nice help...

Br. Ingmar

 

[Going Bald]

Hi Going Bald,

thnx. for your reply...

@Do you have another 2.5" laptop drive?
Yes, I do have... one naked to connect via SATA to USB adapter or an external 1 TB Seagate drive

@Do you have a SATA to USB adapter?
Yes, in deed. I have a SATA to USB adapter from DIGITUS

@Is Win7 installed UEFI or Legacy?
Windows 7 is installed Legacy - as I remember, the UEFI Mode was enabled for Windows 8.1 on that machine and I had to switch it to Legacy for Windows 7 installation

Do you think it would be possible to install OS X 10.10 just on an external USB drive, not to compromise Windows 7 drive at all and just connect the external drive to boot from it to OS X?

Thnx. again for your reply and for your nice help...

Br. Ingmar

Yes, you can do that if you wish. It might be preferable to do it that way with an external OS X drive only connected when you want to boot OS X.

 

[Mac1]

Were you successful with booting Yosemite on this laptop?

 

[tfortexas]

I was able to get it installed on the same drive as an existing windows 7 drive without reformatting it. I used EAUS partition to split the drive then formatted the extra partition in the journaled formation for yosemite. I am running into some boot issues however so looking to fix them. It can be done however its been a headache to put them on 1 drive