I'm trying to create an external startup volume on a 1 Ghz PowerPC G4 iMac. I'm using an 80 GB external USB SATA drive. I'm trying to install OS X 10.4.3 which, according to Wikipedia, ought to run on the G4 PowerPC iMac. The installer won't do the installation. It tells me that the computer won't run of the drive. Will somebody please tell me what I'm doing wrong?
iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
the only way you could boot from an external volume is in target mode with firewire
the only way you could boot from an external volume is in target mode with firewire
Yes, you will be able to both install Mac OS X 10.4.3 and run it off of that external FireWire-Drive* (making it your permanent Boot-/Start-Drive) as you unintentionally but nonetheless wrongly expected it to do so, too, with your USB SATA drive**.
However, expect hard drives with FireWire interface/connection (possibly in addition to USB) to be a fair bit more expensive, though. 😮
*if the manufacturer of the FireWire-Bridge (i.e. Electronic/Chipset/Firmware inside the cabinet) provides it, which they normally do 🙂
**this, back then, wasn't commonly possible with the older type Macs, yet 😟
If you buy a new drive with Firewire get the vendor to confirm it is bootable. I know of one case (Voyager dock) where a vendor updated its models of drives and still had Firewire connections along with USB3 but the new chipset wasn't bootable to Firewire, just okay for data transfer.
If I use a Firewire drive, then will I be able to specify it as the startup volume and have the computer automatically start from that volume?
External Startup Volume on G4 iMac
