Boot From A Firewire External HDD

Hi,

In general and without getting into specifics...

You can boot from a Firewire drive. You cannot boot from a USB drive.

Regards.

Ian.

here's an interesting read.

So the answer is yes, you can and as a matter of fact with the Intel Macs you can boot into OSX with either USB or Firewire external drives.

Plug the drive into the Mac and boot from the install DVD by pressing and holding the "C-key".

Go through the steps of installation but in the "Select a Destination"screen choose the external drive, which should be formatted using "OSX Extended Journaled" and the "GUID Partition Table".

Once OSX is loaded you can boot to it by:

Plugging in the ext-drive then boot the Mac while holding down the "Option-key".
This will launch the Startup Manager so that you can choose which drive to boot from for that one instance.

Hi,

Quite quite sure! 🙂

Regards.


Ian.

Hello again,

Its a complicated issue IMHO. Thats why I worded my first reply as I did. Rather than go into reams and reams of explanation. I would be so bold as to suggest that you google the issue, using the phrase...

Boot a Mac using an external drive ( then add USB or FW ) to drill further.

In a nutshell then...

PPC Mac - Bootable only with FW drives.

Intel Mac - Bootable using USB or FW drives - depending on certain variables.

I trust that is as clear as Greek mud!

Regards once more.

Ian.

Maybe you'd be interested in using a Linux boot loader.

See this article maybe it'll have some useful info for ya.

http://forums.opensuse.org/install-boot-login/392197-installing-opensuse-externa l-hard-drive-then-boot-mac.html

What kind of disk is this? If it's a Western Digital, see their list of which ones should and +should not+ boot: http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/stdadp.php?pfaqid=1787. But note the disclaimer that they don't support it for any of their drives.

Not sure how many different options you can get by holding down the option key at startup but I have certainly managed 4. Internal HD, two bootable partitions on an external HD and a DVD

JhnD wrote:
hi, lan,

how many diff oses can be shown on the apple boot option(option key)?

OSX will show as many options as bootable systems it finds.

if my imac or mac pro has two or more hard drive, does that mean i can install a diff os on a diff drive, and can boot as many as the kinds of diff oses.

Yes. You can even make 2 or more partitions on a drive, and put a bootable system on each one.

As an example, my internal HD has a small partition with Leopard installed on it, in case I need to run or test something with Leopard. I also have a "clone" of my system, as a backup, on an external HD.