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I wish to be able to boot Leopard on an external FireWire portable drive on my Powermac G5 in case of hard disk failure.
Does anyone know which makes of portable drive support booting a PPC from Firewire, I have tried a Western Digital Studio for Mac but that does not show up when holding down the option key during startup.
I think the chipset on the WD drive is not compatible with the Mac.
Many Thanks...
PowerMac G5-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
Hello, WD makes great drives, but not great enclosures...
The WD My Books have had far less than glowing reviews for Macs...
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1543028
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2191614&tstart=0
http://x704.net/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3219&p=42023&hilit=western+digital#p420 23
http://x704.net/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2939&p=34120&hilit=western+digital#p3412 0
The following external hard drives are bootable on Intel-based Macintosh computers systems through USB:
• My Book Essential Edition
• My Book Essential Edition 2.0
• My Book Home Edition
• My Book Mirror Edition
• My Book Office Edition
• My Book Premium Edition
• My Book Premium Edition II
• My Book Premium ES Edition
• My Book Pro Edition
• My Book Pro Edition II
• My Book Studio Edition
• My Book Studio Edition II
• My Passport Studio
The following external hard drives are bootable on Intel-based Macintosh computers systems through FireWire (1394a/b):
• My Book Home Edition
• My Book Mirror Edition
• My Book Office Edition
• My Book Premium Edition
• My Book Premium Edition II
• My Book Pro Edition
• My Book Pro Edition II
• My Book Studio Edition
• My Book Studio Edition II
• My Passport Studio
The following external hard drives are bootable on Power PC based Macintosh computers systems through FireWire (1394a/b):
• WD My Book Premium Edition
• WD My Book Pro Edition
The following external hard drives are not bootable on Power PC based Macintosh computers systems through USB/FireWire 1394(a/b):
• My Book Essential Edition
• My Book Essential Edition 2.0
• My Book Home Edition
• My Book Mirror Edition
• My Book Office Edition
• My Book Premium Edition II
• My Book Pro Edition II
• My Book Studio Edition
• My Book Studio Edition II
• My Passport Studio
• My Passport Elite
• My Passport Essential
• WD Passport
• WD Passport (Silver)
That being said, Option Boot won't show until you Format it HFS+ & Install OSX on it, or clone the Internal.
How to format your disks...
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/partitioning_tiger.html
Thanks to Pondini, Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks...
http://Pondini.org/OSX/DU.html
As far as recommendations for a drive, the Quad Interface ones here...
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB
Hi BDAqua.
Many thanks for the detailed information, the OWC drives from macsales.com do look like the answer to my problem.
Do you know if the G-Drive mobile with Firewire is bootable on a PPC, as I have heard that these drives perform well on the Mac but not whether they can be booted on the G5.
Cheers
Chris...
I do not know for certain, never tried one, but have read good thongs about them... just one note, I'd avoid Bus powered drives.
Hi BDAqua.
Cheers for all your info re Firewire drives for PPC G5.
I think OWC is the way forward.
Many Thanks.
Great, do let us know the outcome please. 🙂
Hi BDAqua.
I finally settled on the Verbatim 500GB Store & Go for Macs.
It has Firewire 800 & USB 3, which will come in handy in the future.
The Verbatim boots my PPC G5 without any problems, and runs faster if you also connect the usb power lead as well.
I thought that buying from Amazon in the UK was a much more reliable experience than having to get an OWC drive from the USA.
Cheers...
Thanks for the report... good work! 🙂
Booting Powermac G5 from External Firewire.
