10.5.8 install issues on an external drive

I did a fresh install of Leopard onto an external drive I keep for emergencies (I never installed it there -- it's been on Tiger for a while) and ran the update after I booted with that as a startup drive. And now I don't have an external bootable drive. For whatever reason, it boots fine in 10.5, but after downloading the 10.5.8 update and restarting, it hung ad the white screen w/ the apple and spinning circle.

So I turned the computer off, did a fresh clean install (without saving network or user info) and rebooted. Again, no probs with 10.5. I installed all the updates (Quicktime, etc.) first and rebooted....no problem. In downloaded only that monster 10.5.8 update again and let it run through the install. Rebooted and went to bed. I came downstairs this morning to an alarmingly hot imac sitting on the white screen with an apple and spinning white circle. It stayed that way all night while I let the update install, and my imac was alarmingly hot to the touch when I checked it this morning.

For whatever reason, it doesn't seem to like being installed on this external hard drive.

Has anyone had success in installing 10.5.8 to an external drive? I'm trying to determine if it just doesn't like this drive or if this is an issue with the update. I'm leery of installing the 10.5.8 on the computers internal hard drive if I don't have a bootable drive I can use for diagnostics if needed.

Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Aug 6, 2009 6:16 AM

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16 replies

Sep 14, 2009 5:00 PM in response to RevMuddsWife

That's very same problem I was seeing. I could solve it by repartitioning the disk with a standard MBR at XP PC. Back to MBP disk utilitity from my 10.5.8 re-partitioned it to GPT and all good working again
But somehow old GPT partiton was bad, becase I could not repartition, reformat or resize any partition using iPartition for example. This gave me a tip something was bad with it.

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10.5.8 install issues on an external drive

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