Can I use USB external DVD Drive to boot up my G4?

Question

Level 1

7 points

Can I use USB external DVD Drive to boot up my G4?

My G4 (PCI Graphics) internal drive DVD-ROM is not working, its dead. I want to replace it with an External USB or Firewire Lacie DVD Drive.

According to Apple document http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58606, my computer cant boot up from Firewire devices. I think that means, I wont be able reinstall my Mac OS or install future systems or start my DiskWarrior from the CD. Using a external Firewire DVD Drive. Let me know if I am wrong?

Can I use a USB external DVD Drive to boot up?

G4 (PCI Graphics) 400 mhz, 488Mb Memory, 50GB, 9.2.2 & 10.3.9. USB 1.0 & Firewire 400 Ports

G4 (PCI Graphics) Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Posted on Dec 26, 2006 7:39 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

Anne Bras

Level 4

1,760 points

Dec 26, 2006 8:27 AM in response to HaroldMac

A external USB drive should work fine:

-Connect your external bootable drive.
-Boot your computer and keep holding the option key till you get a list of bootable devices to choose from, choose the desired drive and click the arrow pointing right to boot from it.

You can also try to boot from a FireWire DVD player (way mentioned above), you never now. A lot off people seem to succeed with this. If your FireWire drive is listed in the boot menu, then it will work fine!

My iBook G3 does only have a CD player, so if i want to instal Tiger from the DVD, i always use my external USB DVD player. (it did always work fine)

Hopefully this is helpfull or solved your problem.
(Please see the "helpfull" and "solved" button's above this message! Apple: Why reward points?.)

Reply

Answer 2

Dec 26, 2006 10:48 AM in response to HaroldMac

Hi, Harold -

Bad news - your G4 (PCI) model can not boot to either a firewire drive nor to a USB drive.

Although the G4 (PCI) models do have native firewire, they (and their cousins the B&W G3) are specifically exempted from firewire booting; there is no workaround for this -
Article #58606 - FireWire Booting

Relatedly, a G4 (PCI) machine can be the Host machine in a Firewire Target Disk Mode setup, but can not be the Target machine.
Article #58583 - Firewire Target Disk Mode

USB booting was introduced first on the G4 (AGP) model, and is not available on earlier Mac models -
Article #58430 - USB Info and Benefits of Dual-Channel USB

The only external drive your G4 (PCI) can be booted to is a SCSI drive - but that requires that the machine have an appropriate SCSI PCI card installed.

Replacing the internal optical drive might be the best choice, particularly for ease of maintenance and OS installing in the future.

Reply