Two Boot Drives possible?

Hello. I want to know if I can buy a small second hard drive and install windows on it and boot from that drive as well? I only want it for a video game.

Can't tell by your signature but it looks like you have a Mac-BOOK-Pro and this is the Mac_Pro___ forums so the answers vary accordingly.
From what I understand, Windows will NOT install on an external disk. So you would have to install it via Boot Camp onto another partition on your Mac boot drive. OR, you can replace the DVD drive and install another drive there and do it that way also. Search the forums for the different ways and which ones to use, HD or SSD.
Suggestion:
Replace your internal HD with a 1T HD or larger then partition the Windows part for 100gig and buy a cheap external housing for the old HD and use it as your backup ddrive?
There are instructions on different ways to install it on an external drive on Yahoo/Google but it's not supported by Microsoft.

Similar Messages

Apple OS X.5 two boot drives on MacPro

I a Powermac G5 computer burnout and had to temporarily put my hard drives in a Mac Pro. I now have two boot drives internally in a Mac Pro. My wife and I are sharing the computer for now. I can boot into each system and it's great. Now I would like more convenience because I'm going back and forth a lot between the two systems, because we are sharing.
Is there a way switch back and forth between the two users on these two boot disks without having to restart and boot into the other disk? Can I virtually boot into the other disk, or can I utilize the users from different systems? Both systems are running the same version of OS X.5.5

you can't switch between two systems without rebooting. the best you can do is use fast user switching between two users on the same system. You can try the following (but I don't promise how well it will work). create the same user on the drive 1 as the one you are switching to on the drive 2. use the same name, short name and password. then go to system preferences->accounts. unlock the lock, select the newly created user, control-click on it and select "advanced options". in the resulting popup set the home directory to pint to the home directory for that user user on drive 2. restart. now you can always boot from drive 1 and use fast user switching to go between users without rebooting. when you are logged in as the user mentioned above, you'll be booted from drive 1 but using its home directory on drive 2. I hope this makes sense. try it out and see if it works.

Leopard Prep: Setting up two boot drives

I actually think I'm going to do a complet system wipe. I've been having enough issues with my system to warrant it. So I'd like to set up a second bootdrive for Leopard. I know some of you guys do this specifically with Logic in mind, so I was hoping someone might walk me through it.

Sorry for kicking in so late. I am in the habit of using CCC, almost religiously. I think you've seen me previously on the forum talk about using CCC on a second partition or drive on your machine, booting up from it, and then doing the apple system patches or plugin updates or what ever, and running like that for a bit to make sure everything is OK. Once I've identified that there are no new anomalies, then I boot into my primary partition and do the same updates the way I did them on the cloned partition.
Further, what I've been doing while testing Leopard is to simply use that second partition or drive and use it to install Leopard. This way I can boot between my 2 operating systems without a hitch, and if Leopard gives me a hard time, I can park it until the next update.
Having that luxury will allow me to install Leopard when I get it Friday, and run all my software with the gold master and see what sticks and what falls and it will allow me to decide if I want to use it full time or not. I suspect at this point that because of the Apogee drivers I won't be using Leopard full time. In fact the Apogee site now officially says to not use any of their drivers with OS 10.5... yeah no kidding it kernel panics the box. So until Apogee gets their driver out, and I hope that's soon along with Leopard itself, I am going to keep both Tiger and Leopard running, and when I want to do my music, I just boot up in Tiger, when I want to do everything else I work in Leopard.
Another idea I am toying with is that once I get Leopard going with everything I need, I may just rebuild the Tiger drive and make it a music only drive. Meaning that boot drive will only have Logic and its needed components. Everything else will be on Leopard. I would probably split that drive in 2 partitions so I can still do my upgrade tests. Is it time consuming? yes to setup it seems time consuming, but the end result is that you will always have a running system that is always clean and free of any issues, and it will allow you to quickly test the updates so that you can take advantage of what ever changes apple and 3rd parties are making... or decide that they fumbled the ball and you don't want to make a change.
Living in fear and sticking on an old OS version is simply not a good thing.
Here is an interesting article on Leopard security if you're interested:
http://db.tidbits.com/article/9251
R

Lightroom 5.3: having no files on boot-drive possible?

I installed Lightroom 5.3. on my PC. Because I have a small 64 GB SSD-drive I installed the program and catalog under a bigger D-drive. But I still find files on the C-drive (e.g. c:\users\manfred\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom). Is it possible to have all files on D-drive and nothing on C-drive? Is there a setting in the program?

no, adobe programs always use the c drive.

Is back-up to TWO external drives possible?

Is there a trick anyone knows of to use two backup disks for time machine?
Here's my situation:
- two 150GB external drives (total of 300GB for backups)
- need to back up ~240 GB from the computer to these drives
- only one destination drive is allowed by time machine, so it won't even start the initial back up as the source files are greater than 150 GB (the size of one external drive).
- I know file exclusion is an option, but I have over 150 GB that needs to be backed up! I can't exclude enough to make them fit....
So, I have enough space for backups, but it's on two external disks! Is there any way to get time machine to accept or use both drives? Anyone know of any tricks?
Thanks!
Selena M.

How big a drive depends on what you're really backing up. You noted you used to back up your system; you might be unaware that a "system backup" in TM is not the same thing as what you used to do (well, I'm assuming a bit here - that is, you wouldn't be able to "fix" a corrupted system just by dragging your TM backup stuff onto your main drive again).
The size of the backup drive also depends on the kind of work you do. If you do video or heavy-duty Photoshop stuff, those files, and their incremental backups, take up a lot of room. If you surf, email, and use word processor, those are compact files whose incremental backups take up tiny amounts of space. Also consider that, although you currently have 240 gig on your drive, lots of that is System and Applications, and very little of that changes, so the initial backup is almost the only copy of that stuff that's going to go on your backup drive.
In all, Apple's occasional recommendation of 2.5 times the size of your working drive for the size of your TM drive is, for many, or most, people, not necessary. In all likelihood, 500GB is going to be fine. In some of my experiments, I've used a 30GB (not a typo) backup drive for my laptop's 120GB drive, backing up only my User-folder stuff with no problem, using it for many weeks. While I don't do a lot of iPhoto stuff, and no movies, I do have tons of Word documents, and half-tons of large InDesign and Photoshop files. I had plenty of room for the initial backup, the current one, and 2-3 weeks of interval backups. (No system backup, no Applications folder backup, excluded things like the Trash, etc).
When you get your new drive - don't discard the old ones - or, at least, keep one of the old ones. Make it your emergency startup drive, with a system on it in case your main system goes wonky; also, use it if you use something like Entourage, or a PC-emulation software - you don't want TM backing up those files, but you should be backing them up, and an occasional drag of those files to your "special backup" disk can be lifesaver.
s.

Two Macs, one external boot drive (not at same time)

I'm in a weird situation where I travel b/t two cities during the week and am looking to have a computer in each. Have been doing the laptop thing, but it's too heavy to drag everyday and too slow for the video editing (I'm a filmmaker) I need to do now. So, I have a 1TB SSD and am looking to make it a boot drive (via USB 3 or Thunderbolt) for two different Macs. Right now I'm looking at two iMacs, but I might want to make one of them something else, possibly a new or older Mac Pro.
So, would I be able to run both Macs with one external drive? Also, would I have any issues if I go with two different kinds of Macs? Thought maybe there would be an advantage to having the same with connection issues of some sort.
Thanks for any help!

Let me ask: how are you getting your two OS's on the external drive?
For one thing, if I understand you correctly, you want one OS on the external and use it on both Macs? That, according to the licensing agreement, is not allowed (see excerpt below); you're allowed one backup copy officially. And, secondly, you cannot boot a Mac with an OS version earlier than what it came with, so it would depend on the build of your Macs (and the exact build version it came with). My initial thought was that you clone your internal hard drives to the two partitions on the external and run them separately.
For now, just a guess on your Q #1 - not sure, depends on where it originated (see above for not booting with an earlier version) and, I prefer cloning FROM the internal system TO the external (again, because of build versions/firmware).
Q #2: see above re. software licensing agreement.
Q #3: not sure at this point
As for the SLA - if the OS is preinstalled, the license is for that computer only:
Here is a link to the SLA:
http://www.apple.com/legal/sla/
And, FWIW: no, once you mark an answer, it cannot be undone - hopefully, that won't matter and someone else will pop in with a brilliant idea.....

Possible to convert a mirrored RAID boot drive to a single disc boot drive

hi ... i made the mistake of installing my Macpro with a RAID on the first two drive bays as a startup disc. Although this doesn't pose any problems per se i would like to have a single disc startup drive now but i do not have the time or courage to re-install and re-configure everything (installation&config with all software takes 3 days due to the huge number of software i have on this machine).
is it possible (and how) to get rid of the RAID and convert one of the discs to a normal startup volume so i can reformat the second disc and use it as a work drive ? Since the 'mirrored' drives both contaion a full startup drive this should be possible i think but could not find any info on this.
thx for any help with this ...

hey .. funny how expert opinions vary ... i have a handfull of IT and software RAID experts who disagree with you ... in my case, i'd rather get rid of it ... ( however i still have to find a solution to clone my boot drive that works flawlessly with all my software ... )
anyways ... how exactly do i go about splitting the RAID, to make sure i don't mess it up ....
1. restart from CD
2. Delete the mirrored RAID set
3. remove one of the HDs with the raid slice on it (i'll keep it as a backup 4 the moment just in case)
4. restart from the remaining slice disc
5. ... ?
do i need to do anything specific ... ? what about the name of the Volume .. for the moment my startup disk (the RAID) is called 'BootRAID' ... the slices are called 'RAID Slice (disk0s2)' and 'RAID Slice (disk1s2)' .. in order for everything to work properly, don't i have to rename the new startup disk ?
i'm scared ...
here's a screenshot of my setup: http://kinkajou.net/diskUtility_RAID.jpg
<Edited by Moderator>

Changing physical drives, moving boot partition - possible?

I intend to upgrade the hard drives on a server (stand-alone, standard installation, 10.5.1 Server). When building a new larger drive into the machine of course I would like to move all data (system and users) to that new drive.
Is that possible, can I clone my system to the new drive and then reboot from that new harddrive - or what would be the path to switch drives?
Thanks.

First use the Disk Utility to "format" the new drive (partition/initialize it).
Then use DiskUtility to Restore the old to the new drive - observe: without erasing the new bigger newly "formatted" drive.
If you boot from another drive (DVD server install for example) for the whole process, the copy can go faster (block copy is used instead of file copy).
(If using file copy I understand why you shouldn't erase the new drive but for block copy the Restore must also grow the volume to the new drive size.)
I tried splitting up a RAID 1 set in a Xserve, mounted 2 new larger drives in the 2 now remaining drive slots, mirrored those and tried to Restore from the now degraded first RAID to the new one but it failed approximatly when it reach the size of the old RAID volume.
For the second machine I first had a spare single drive in the third slot Restored to it from the mirrored drive using the method above (didn't boot from another volume because I hadn't any graphics adapter in the second server). I then mirrored two new drive and restored from the single disk to the mirrored volume - all went well and much faster than the first server.

Is it possible to have two USB drives for the IPad? I want to bring RAW photo files from my camera, through the IPad and back to an external hard drive. One of my cameras does not use an SD card. How can I do this?

Is it possible to have two USB drives for the IPad? I want to bring RAW files from my camera through the IPad and out to an external hard drive. One of my cameras has an SD card but the other one doesn't have a card that would fit in any of the camera devices I've seen on line. Realted to this, I bought the IPad camera accessory. Can I put the SD card in the device and also hook the external hard drive to the USB port of the accessory and download from the camera to the hard drive? Can I put Lightroom or the Nikon photo editing software on the IPad? Right now I carry a PC laptop and external hard drives with me on wildernes trips. Internet and WiFi are not available. Because I shoot so many photos and they're in RAW I need to download from the camera to the external drive because I run out of memory on the PC (and it has much more memory than the IPad). I have Nikon NX software and lightroom on my PC. I'd love to be able to reduce the weight I carry by using the IPad to edit my photos each night while on trips. Is this possible and how would I do it? I'd appreciate any guidance.

No, the camera connection kit only supports the copying of photos and videos to the Photos app, it doesn't support copying content off the iPad. For your second camera instead of the SD reader part of the kit, does the iPad to camera cable not work with it for direct transfer to the iPad ?
For Lightroom and Nikon software again no - you can only install apps that are available in the iTunes app store on your computer and the App Store app on the iPad, 'normal' PC and Mac (OS X) software are not compatible with the iPad (iOS). There are some apps that perform fairly basic editing functions that are available in the store, but nothing as sophisticated as, for example, Lightroom.

Is it possible to set up a backup between two external drives

Is it possible to set up a backup between two external drives?
i use time machine to back up my imac onto an external 2T.
i also have two external 3T drives. i am looking for redundancy of data, tried software RAID and it failed. i also see some limitations with RAID that a backup would avoid.
thanks for sharing your expertise.
be well,
tony

so thanks to all of you, particularly rkaufmann87 i have decided to stop the plan of setting up a software RAID set. instead i have downloaded ccc and am in the process of setting up the secone 3t external drive as a clone. i will use time machine to back up the internal hard drive only and if possible see if i can clone that as well onto one of the 3t's.
this gives me the peace of mind i sounght and avoids the problem of total corruption that exists with the raid solution i was exploring.
thank you all for making this an enjoyable and informative experience. what a powerful community.
be well
tony

Is it possible to use External HD as main boot drive? (Help!)

Hi all
I am about to buy a Seagate FreeAgent Pro (link: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/478636-REG/SeagateST305004FPA1E3_RK_FreeAgent_Pro_500GB_eSATA.html) with 500Gb and FW400/USB2.0/eSATA. I have a Mac Mini, and its internal HD is too small for me (80Gb total for about 70Gb of data).
What I'd like to do is install OS X on the External HD and use it as my main boot drive, and perhaps the Mini's internal HD for data backup. Would that be possible/legal (I only have the install discs that came with it - my first Mac :D)? If it is complicated, could you guys explain me how to do it?
I'd also like to know whether the performance would be better or worse. The Mini's got a 5400 RPM drive, and the external is 7200 RPM and would be connected through FW400 (plus a lot of free space for now).
One last question: if it is indeed possible/legal to use the External HD as my main boot drive, would it be possible to install and boot Windows on the external HD using Boot Camp or Parallels?
Cheers
Daniel
Mac Mini 1.83 GHz Core Duo 1 GB Ram 80 GB HDD Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Performance will be worse because FW400 is considerably slower than the internal bus. For startup I would continue using the internal drive. You can use the external drive for data storage as well as off-loading any music, picture, and movie files to free up space on the internal drive. You can also partition a chunk of the external drive (80 GBs) to use as a backup partition for the internal hard drive. You can clone your internal drive to the external (partition) which will give you a bootable backup. Here's how:
How to Clone Using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2. Select the backup or destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (journaled, if available) and click on the Erase button. This step can be skipped if the destination has already been freshly erased.
4. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
5. Select the backup or destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the startup or source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
8. Select the destination drive on the Desktop and press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info window. At the bottom in the Ownership and Permissions section be sure the box labeled "Ignore Permissions on this Volume" is unchecked. Verify the settings for Ownership and Permissions as follows: Owner=system with read/write; Group=admin with read/write; Other with read-only. If they are not correct then reset them.

M92p SFF: Possible to add a 2.5" SSD boot drive in the 3.5" external card reader bay?

I recently bought a M92p Small Form Factor with model number 2988-A5U.
Is it possible to to add an additional 2.5" SSD as a boot drive while retaining the 3.5" 1TB SATA as the data drive?
I have searched many posts and datasheets on the internet but could't find an answer.
http://www.partnerinfo.lenovo.com/partners/us/products/downloads/thinkcentre-mseries/ThinkCentre-M92...
The above specs. states that it supports 2 HDDs but I can't find another 3.5" or 2.5" internal HDD bay.
My thought is to put a 2.5" SSD into the 3.5" card reader bay. Is it feasible?

I ordered a 2.5" General 2.5" SSD to 3.5" SATA Hard Disk Drive HDD caddy from Amazon that fit perfectly! General 2.5" SSD to 3.5" SATA HDD caddy It came with screws that fit the new SSD, and the caddy fit the blue plastic carrier that slides into the 3.5" bay. This caddy properly aligns the connectors off to the left side, supports up to 6GBs SATA, and is even hot swappable.

Possible to use TC as clone of boot drive in Leopard?

Time Machine seems to take FOREVER whenever I run it, so I end up not running it. I was wondering if it is possible to use Time Capsule as a pure hd and clone my boot drive to it for a full backup option? If so, how? Are there reasons not to?

Bad sectors automatically get re-written when new data are supplied. If the new data don't "stick" a spare will be substituted.
If you are happy with your clone, just update it. There is no need to write Zeroes to it. I was suggesting that process for when you make major changes -- it takes several hours to complete.
You may prefer to use you smaller drive, Zeroed, to start a new clone, wait a little while to assure success, then start a Time Machine backup set on the larger Iomega.
Or some other approach that has not occurred to me.

Is it possible - two hard drives in w510

Hello, on Lenovo specification page about w510 ( http://www.pc.ibm.com/europe/thinkpad/why/ru/wseries/thinkpad_wseries.html?ru&ru&cc=ru ) I`ve found "Жесткий диск До 2x320 ГБ RAID 0" (in English - "Hard Drive Up to 2x320 GB RAID 0") is it means that it is possible to install two hard drives? In wich specifications it is possible?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Hi and welcome to the forum!
You need Thinkpad Serial ATA Hard Drive Bay adapter to put the second HDD in W510:- http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-73170.html
It will work in any W510's configuration.
Hope this helps.
Maliha (I don't work for lenovo)
ThinkPads:- T400[Win 7], T60[Win 7], IBM 240[Win XP]
IdeaPad: U350
Apple:- Macbook Air [Snow Leopard]
Did someone help you today? Compliment them with a Kudos!
Was your question answered today? Mark it as an Accepted Solution!
Lenovo Deutsche Community Lenovo Comunidad en Español
Visit my YouTube Channel

Two 3.5" floppy drives possible?

I am a system builder and one of my clients needs to have two 3.5" floppy drives in his new system. We are using the 865PE Neo2-PLS motherboard. The BIOS appears to support two floppy drives and we have configured it for two floppy drives. We have been unable to make this work. All we get is the drive at the end of the cable (after the twist) as drive A (even when booting into DOS from drive A. We have tried on two seperate 865PE Neo2-PLS motherboards. The floppy drives have been tested and are OK. We have used several different floppy cables. Any ideas?

Not much info on this.
There are internal 3.5" floppy/card reader drives available that connect to a motherboard USB header.
Here's An Example

Two Boot Drives possible?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for