can a mid 2011 27 inch iMac start up from an attached thunderbolt drive (OWC eSata connected through the LaCie thunderbolt adapter)?
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.5), 27 inch mid 2011
Yes, it can boot from a Thunderbolt drive.
Yes, it can boot from a Thunderbolt drive.
Currently the iMac is running Lion (not Mountain Lion). Will this work as you suggested? Can I clone the iMac drive (SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner) to the thunderbolt drive and then restart from it (in order to us DiskWarrior for example)? Thanx.
Sorry for the redundancy. I meant use DiskWarrior. Also, will this work if I upgrade the iMac to Mountain Lion?
Yes, you can. Of course you can do the same thing using the Firewire or USB ports. DW works the same in Mountain Lion as Lion provided you have the latest version.
I would, however, recommend using CCC instead of SD!. Or use Disk Utility's Restore option. SD! cannot handle the Recovery HD partition when cloning volumes. The other two can.
I would consider something that doesn't use any adapter like the LaCie thunderbolt drive but if it boots from from something with an adapter no real reason not to do so. I had a friend buy the 2011 iMac at the same time I got mine but he got it with a hard drive and I got mine with SSD. After he saw the difference he bought a LaCie thunderbolt external and it works perfectly, making his iMac boot super fast and apps open MUCH faster even though it's running off an external.
+1 to the comment a bout CCC. I was a long time SD user but now use CCC because it keeps my emergency boot partition in place. Dunno why SD hasn't implemented that but nothing to worry about.
can a mid 2011 27 inch iMac start up from an attached thunderbolt drive?
