Help Installing OS on G5 without internal Superdrive

Question

Level 1

8 points

Help Installing OS on G5 without internal Superdrive

I recently picked up a 1.6 GHZ PowerMac G5 and I need help installing either 10.4 or 10.5 with an internal Superdrive that does not work.

I goal is to get this up and running for a family member that doesn't need the latest and greatest, just email, websurfing, etc so am trying not to put any more money into it and because going the ebay route the sellers that have them for a decent price have horrible ratings.

I have tried the following:

External USB optical drive- won't boot to it but works fine on the G5 otherwise

Bootable USB jump drive- won't boot

Installing the OS on the hard drive in docking station by booting the OS disc in a G4 MacMini- I get the error

"You cannot install Mac OS X on this volume. Mac OS X cannot start up from this volume." even though I pre-formatted the disc using Apple partition scheme.

Any ideas?

P.S. I have a firewire driven iPod Gen 2- would firewire make the difference if I made it bootable?

How would I do that?

Thanks

Posted on Mar 16, 2014 8:51 AM

Reply

Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Mar 16, 2014 12:29 PM in response to gollumsmac

Firewire should be bootable.

You can also use the Mini's optical drive for installing on the iMac using FireWire target disk mode...

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661

Put the Install DVD in the the other Mini, shut both down, connect with a Firewire cable, boot the Mini holding the t key down, once the floating FW symbol shows up, boot the this iMac holding the Option/alt key down, eventually the Install Disk will show as a Boot Option on this one.

Reply

Answer 2

gollumsmac Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 16, 2014 1:05 PM in response to gollumsmac

Actually I was just going to update. I figured the iPod was worth a shot.

With the iPod already properly formatted, I used Disc Utliity to erase it, using Restore with a OS 10.5 disc image as the source and the iPod as the destination it completed the restore.

I plugged it in to the G5 and was able to boot to it and it worked!

I was able to install 10.5.

To top it off I since I didn't have any 3.5" hard drives laying around I plugged in and was able to use a laptop drive.

I think it's worth it now to go ahead and buy a new 3.5 since I know I can install the OS without the internal optical drive.

Reply

Answer 3

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Mar 17, 2014 10:06 AM in response to gollumsmac

OK, make sure the new drive is truly SATA 1.5 Gb/s compatible. 🙂

Reply