How to reboot from external drive without firewire after MBA crash?

Question

How to reboot from external drive without firewire after MBA crash?

I know how to reboot from an external drive using the firewire port when the mac crashes (I tried this on my Powerbook G4), but how do I boot from an external drive if the MBA has no firewire port?

It has not happened to me yet, but I would like to know just in case. I read about doing it over the network in this forum http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8300343&#8300343.

But the instructions confused me. I do not know much about computers by the way so a really straightforward and simple method would suit me best.

MacBook Air 1.86 GHz, Powerbook G4, Mac OS X (10.5.6), Nil

Posted on Sep 25, 2009 9:59 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Sep 25, 2009 10:15 PM in response to applecore_eater

The Apple post mentioned something about a server. I do not know what my network server is.

The last post mentioned a method I could possibly use.

Step 1: Clone my MacBook Air using SuperDuper or CCC onto an external drive. Make an image of that drive and put it onto another mac (Powerbook G4 Panther OSX, in my case). I will run out of space however as my Powerbook G4 has almost used up its hard disk space.

Step 2: Install the operating system, in my case Leopard 10.5.6, on the MBA using the software restore disc that came with the computer. A minimum install is one without any data, just the system. Maybe put the Applications on too using the Applications disc, not sure about this part.

Step 3: Attach the Powerbook to the MBA using the ethernet cable that came with the MBA. Ethernet end to the Powerbook and the USB end to the MacBook Air.

Step 4: Copy the image onto the MacBook Air using Migration Assistant. Migration Assistant has to be open on both computers.

I don't know how to use Migration Assistant but I guess it would be a matter of selecting the files you want to migrate over and you do that by picking the ones that you need in the image file and then sending them over using the Migration Assistant or something like that.

How much space will an image file take up on the Powerbook G4? Will the space be minimal because it's an image file? I really do not understand the concept of image files well.

Reply

Answer 2

JasonFear

Level 5

4,965 points

Sep 25, 2009 11:25 PM in response to applecore_eater

Hi applecore_eater,

You can boot from a USB drive on your MacBook Air. The one drawback of not having the Firewire port is the lack of "Target Disk Mode" that's works only over Firewire. A clean install of just the base OS (10.5.x) would run you about 9GB of space with a compressed disc image output. However if you do that and store it somewhere, like on the HD of another machine it won't be bootable for recovery purposes.

What I ended up doing is purchasing a 16GB USB drive for about $40 (bought it about a month ago) and I use that as my failsafe boot volume. You can easily cram OS X and iLife '09 on there, as long as you omit the printer drivers, language pack and Garageband loops.

Reply