Boot off external HD

I have a new iMac Late 2014 retina 27 inch , it came with 10.2.2
I need Mountain Lion to use iMovie HD 6.0.3.
I have an external HD partition with Mountain Lion installed, and I cannot boot up from the external hard drive in Mountain Lion or 10.9 partition.
My last iMac had no problem booting from the external.
Does anybody have a workaround where I can have this iMac run Mountain Lion?

I have no experience with VirtualBox - Will it run on an external drive?
Will it run iMovie HD 6.0.3 ?
thanks
Neal

Similar Messages

Booting off external hard drive

I am trying to boot off an external Seagate 160GB USB hard drive. I used SuperDuper to create a full system backup to my drive. When I reboot, I should hold option, right? When I hold option, the grey screen comes up when booting after the chime and then the system reboots again with the chime. It doesn't give me the bootable drive option. Can someone help? Thanks.

hello i have a similar problem with my mac mini i aquired a 160GB western digital drive and cloned my current 40GB seagate drive into it using a software called carbon copy cloner but after replacing the drive the flashing ? appears iv tried almost everything possible i have zapped the pram,reset the nvram and nothing seems to work but i see the drive when i connect to my mac via usb as an external harddrive i guess my question is how do i make my new hard drive bootable since its going to replace my old one in the mac please help.
thanks
aden

Why won't iMac boot off external HD?

Hi I need help setting up a computer and when I connect my external hard drive it won't allow me to boot from it when I start it up holding (option). It lets me pick between recovery and the external and built in hard drive?

If the computere you are setting up is a New Mac and the external hard drive you are using is from an older Mac that is why it won't boot off the external. All New Mac's come with Special Builds of the current version of OS X and they will not boot or run off an older version of OS X Even IF that older version is the same Base version, like Mt Lion 10.8.x.
The version of OS X that is installed on newer Mac's have the correct Drive Package for the newer hardware. The external does not have the correct drivers.

Mini G4 Won't Boot off External after 10.4.9 Update

I've tried three times to install the update and boot off my external hard drive connected to my MacMini G4. Tried the usual stuff like using Combo update, reparing permissions, reset NVRAM, safe boot, single-user login, etc. After it updates successfully, the machine reboots and after a few seconds, the "broken folder" or prohibitory sign appears. The little progress indicator continues to spin, but I have to restart off the internal drive to boot up. Once booted, the external has to be turned off and on so that it will appear on the desktop.
Never a problem with earlier updates. Back to 10.4.8 I go....

Howard:
Welcome to Apple Discussions.
Try booting from the install disk and running Repair Disk in Disk Utility. Here's how:
Insert Installer disk and Restart, holding down the "C" key.
Go to Installer menu (Panther and earlier) or Utilities menu (Tiger) and launch Disk Utility.
Select your HDD (manufacturer ID) in the left panel.
Select First Aid in the Main panel.
(Check S.M.A.R.T Status of HDD at the bottom of right panel, and report)
Click Repair Disk on the bottom right.
If DU reports disk does not need repairs quit DU and restart.
If DU reports errors Repair again and again until DU reports disk is repaired.
If DU reports errors it cannot repair you will need to use a utility like Tech Tool Pro or Disk Warrior
Good luck.
cornelius

Booting off external firewire drive

Hi Ive cloned my internal imac drive using superduper.
Inside the startup application i can now see my external drive as bootable.
I am trying to boot off the external drive TARGET disk mode. Is this correct to get the os to boot off the external FW drive?

Hello Joe.
You don't use Target disk mode to do so. When connected, you can select the external firewire drive to boot from via System Preferences > Startup Disk or use the Startup Manager during startup or restart.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106178

Boot off external HDD?

hello,
I have a Powerbook G4 running panther, and a Power Mac G3 with Tiger. i want to boot tiger on my powerbook, but the g3 won't go into target disk mode... how do i do this??
TheMacGuy12

Netbooting requires OS X Server.
Again, what's the goal? Do you want to install Tiger on the G4? If so then you need to boot the G4 into TDM, boot the G3 normally. You can then erase the G4's drive and clone Tiger from the G3 to the G4 using the Restore option of Disk Utility.

When I check my boot SSD drive using Disk Utility under Mavericks, I often get "Incorrect number of extended attributes" errors. But if I boot off an external drive and check the same SSD, no errors are reported. Is this a bug in Mavericks?

When I check my boot SSD drive using Disk Utility under Mavericks, I often get "Incorrect number of extended attributes" errors. But if I boot off an external drive and check the same SSD, no errors are reported.
This happens not just with the SSD in my Mac Mini, but with another SSD in my MacBook (both now running Mavericks). So far as I know, all of the kit I am using is in good order (despite the file corruption reports). So I am beginning to wonder if it could be due to a bug in Mavericks? Both SSD drives have been formatted to MacOS Extended (journaled) format. Should I have used a different format, I wonder?
Has anyone else encountered this issue?
Does anyone have a solution?
Or an explanation that might help my investigation of the issue?
Thanks guys,

I understand that the Corsair Force 3 is not one of the SSD drives that are supported on Apple Macs.
I did try downloading and using Trim Enabler, but the error message came up both when it was off and when it was on.
I understand that not everyone thinks Trim Enabler is a good program, though there is a new version out now, so I may give it another try.

Booting OSs off external disk drive.

Hi I have a 15" MBP (the old type) with a disk functional disk drive. I want to install windows on an external hard drive to be booted off the MBP. However the external disk drive does not like any OS CDs other than MAC OS X ones. It tells me I can boot but when I try it says "Missing Operating System". Is there a way to boot windows (or Ubuntu) from an external disk drive?

Not as is. Neither OS will boot from an external drive without modification. Visit Ubuntu's web site for help with it. You should be able to find some articles via Google on how to modify Windows to boot from an external drive.
However, if you want to install Windows from a Windows installer disc you cannot do so from an external optical drive.

MBP upgraded to Mavericks won't boot off of external drive

Now that I have upgraded my MBP to Mavericks I can not longer boot off of extrenal drives like I has in the past. I hold down the option key at boot up and it display the external drive as a bootable option but once clicked....it just hangs.
Has anyone else experienced this?
Thanks,
D

Well, want to rule out drive case,, as those do come up with EVERY new OS, just hit Lion 10.7 forum when it came out, or when 10.6.0 came out 3 yrs ago.
Maybe the power adapter is the weak link.
As I said, and goes back yrs, not a fan of FW/USB/eSATA case from major vendors (LaCie, WD, Seagate etc).
And you could try another case. Be sure to buy a case that lets you swap in your own hard drives though.
http://www.macsales.com/firewire - look for bare drive case "0" capacity hard drive

Could I boot off an external 1tb ssd instead upgrading internal to 512gb ssd?

Instead of going for the upgrades apple offers could i just buy an external 1 tb ssd and boot off that?
WHat will the disadvantages be? and will it be slower than if it were internal? if so why?

How would you connect the external SSD to the iMac?
If the bus used is slow then you would lost all the benefits of the SSD?
So what bus are you planning on using here?
Allan

Trouble booting off DVD/external drive. wierd boot screen

My new iBook G4 has been working fine by itself.
I have an older external firewire drive and when I try to use that as the startup drive, it seems to boot up fine but the cursor remains frozen in the top left corner. The keyboard seems to work fine. (I haven't been able to get keyboard commands to drive the menus. That's another problem I guess).
I can run the original install disk and I can run the hardware diagnostics on it. All is fine.
Then I tried to reinstall Tiger on the external hard drive using the install DVD that came with our family pack.
When I run the installer on my new iBook G4 and the computer restarts, the screen that comes up after the gray Apple logo and spinning gear is a blue border and white rectangle with graphics showing what look like a two-step process, numbered 1 and 2 at the bottom. The graphic depicts an oval shape with what looks like a cover removed and two AA-type battery icons linked to the graphic. The picture is much the same for each step with differences the communnicate the idea of inserting or replacing. The second step has a small blinking red circle, like a screw head.
I have no control over the arrow cursor in the top-left of my screen. No action I can perform onscreen from the keyboard.
What is this screen?
I tried resetting PRAM, went into Open Firmware to reset NVRAM and all.
No devices are attached and it still does this. I don't use a wireless mouse, which is sort of what the oval shape reminds me of. Given the frozen cursor in both cases, it makes me think there's something going on with the information it's getting about what pointing device is being used.
The DVD runs fine on other computers and is right now completing the installation I was trying to do, using a Powerbook G4.

Thanks. Makes sense. I'll try that. I had checked the drive firmware with the most recent LaCie updater. So I didn't think it was the drive.
I did manage to use the keyboard shortcuts to open the Keyboard Preference Pane while booted off of the external drive. I enjoyed learning how useful it is to type the beginning of search terms (like "trac") into the Search box and use the menu of matches returned to navigate by Mouse to the Trackpad pane, only to be told that the Trackpad Tab wasn't loaded because my iBook doesn't have one (wrong). It had loaded only the Mouse tab.
Learning a few new tidbits today. Thank you very much.

Can you boot off a usb drive or external hard drive (usb 2.0) on an iMac?

I have an intel iMac that will not boot off of a USB drive with Ubuntu installed (my PC netbook boots off the usb drive fine) or my external hard drive with Ubuntu installed. I heard somewhere that you cannot boot off of usb on iMacs even if they are Intel, but a Genius bar guy told me diffferent. Then why won't it work for me, and how can I make it? Thanks.

I should have been more general in my post - I don't believe any Mac can boot off an external drive with Ubuntu. I could be wrong of course (and if I am, hopefully someone will correct me), but as Mac hardware is so specific that it demands a specific install disk for each build/model/generation, it would be unable to boot with just a "foreign" OS such as Ubuntu installed. As you may know, you can't boot an iMac with an install disk from a different model iMac, Macbook, or any other Mac (unless it is exactly the same build/model), so it doesn't surprise me that it won't boot with Ubuntu.
Edit: and this question begs to be asked: why would you want to boot/use Ubuntu when you have a superb OS to work with already?
Message was edited by: Barbara Daniels1

Xserve Crash - Now won't boot off either SAS Drive

Hi all,
My Xserve (2008) just crashed about an hour ago - turning on the screen connected to the Xserve showed the entire thing had ground to a halt, meaning I had to hold the power button down, thinking it just needed a reboot.
Upon re-booting, it just started flashing the "No OS" ?-inside-a-folder icon.
Booting off the system DVD doesn't seem to work, it loads as far as the first blue screen and gets stuck.
I've successfully managed to boot off a MacBook Pro via Target Disk Mode, and upon startup was presented with two dialogue boxes saying the disks I had inserted were unreadable by the system.
Can it really be true that BOTH my SAS drives have failed at the same time?
One was the boot drive, the other a cloned backup updated every other day.
Unfortunately I don't have a backup of the backup, though somewhat luckily this is just the OS. All the 'data' is stored in RAID5 arrays.
Any ideas what might be happening? Something inside the Xserve itself?
I'm currently installing Snow Leopard Server onto a LaCie FW800 drive through a Mac Mini, should be done in about 25 minutes. I'll then plug that into the Xserve and try to alt-boot off that, see if I can get to DiskWarrior.
Any help is appreciated,
-Robert

Nicolas, welcome, did you boot from OS 9.1 or 9.2 for the firmware update. And exactly what happens when you attempt to boot from the external.
Joe
Power Mac G4 Gigabit Ethernet Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Should I boot from external hard disk and how do I achieve this?

I'm in a downward spiral and need advice about if booting off of an external hard disc is the right thing to do and how to go about it. How I got into this mess I'll write below. My immediate problem is that I want to be able to install a copy of osx 10.5 from the original disks that came with my computer onto a usb hard drive. Then I want to boot from that drive and install software such as disk warrior on the same external hard drive in order to repair and recover the files on my internal hard disk. Not sure if this is easy to do with the install disk that came boxed with my macbook. So is what I want to do feasible and how do I do it? Thanks.
How did I get into this mess?
For those with time to read more. A downward spiral (and my macbook was working fine)::
I have been backing up my work documents onto a 20 GB pendrive waiting to get the money to buy an nas to work with time machine for the two macbooks we have at home as a place to backup photos and video. I bought a network drive but it wouldn't work with my macbook; my time machine backup freezing at 3 gb, but works fine with wife's macbook pro.
I tried to do TM backup on a usb hard disk and got the same problem. Support forums indicated that hard disk problems could confuse TM, so although I was experiencing problem free computing I ran disk utility from internal osx. This indicated an <invalid node structure - file system verify or repair failed> at the checking catalog file stage. So I followed instructions to run disk utility and repair from the installation disk. When I ran disk utility from installation disk I get exactly the same <invalid node structure - file system verify or repair failed>. It gets worse.
After failing with install disk utility, I could not then boot from my hard disk (I had had trouble free computing up to my attempts to use TM) or eject the disk. At first attempt I had no option but to boot from dvd again as hd not offered as an option. Second attempt hd option available but fails. By reading advice given to others I managed to eject the dvd and have tried:
safe boot - it won't
boot in verbose mode and single user (indicates I have disk0s2:I/O error) and won't boot
try to use disk utility from install disk to create disk image on external hd, it won't (cites i/o error)
If I can boot from an external I will try to repair with Disk Warrior as forums indicate that this software has been able to solve <invalid node structure> issues (but am open to recommendations of other products). I also hope that I may be able to try again to burn a disk image sucessfully if this repair works. I'm still trying to save my photos and videos that aren't backed up.
I plan to try an archive and install installation but first I want to try a repair with disk warrior as I fear that archive and install won't work and I'll end up having to erase and repair my hard disk.
I feel like some perverse god is punishing me for trying to do the right thing and back up my hard disk.
Macbook 5.1 late 2008
Intel Core 2 Duo
OSX Leopard 10.5.8
85 GB of a 150GB hard disk needs backing up (saving)

I am not sure about this, but my memory is that if you try to partition the drive (in OS 10.5.8) it will erase the data.
But you can try. Go through the Add a partition steps, but watch for any warnings. If my memory is correct there will be a message to the effect that everything will be erased. If you see that, do not proceed. This page has info about how to do it, if it can be done: http://www.macworld.com/article/1164643/live_partition.html
With respect to DW on an external, I do that. I have a 80 GB external - I call it Emergency - with an OS, DW and TechTool Pro on it. (Since I have is a recovery partition built in with all new OS, Emergency would be of use only if I need to run DW or TTP.) I have never yet had to use it, but it's there. It is not usually connected - I just did that for this screen shot.

Why is my GUID partitioned HD not booting from external firewire

Hello everyone,
I have a new 2TB WD EARS drive which I have Snow Leopard installed on. It was cloned from my 1TB WD drive which was running Snow Leopard perfectly beforehand. I have the 2TB HDD installed in a firewire400/800/USB/eSata enclosure and I cannot boot up from the HDD. It is GUID Partitioned as you can see from the Info below:
    Name :     WDC WD20 EARS-19MVWB0 Media
    Type :     Disk
    Partition Map Scheme :     GUID Partition Table
    Disk Identifier :     disk1
    Media Name :     WDC WD20 EARS-19MVWB0 Media
    Media Type :     Generic
    Connection Bus :     USB
    USB Serial Number :     000001D919A8
    Writable :     Yes
    Ejectable :     Yes
    Mac OS 9 Drivers Installed :     No
    Location :     External
    Total Capacity :     1.8 TB (2,000,398,934,016 Bytes)
    S.M.A.R.T. Status :     Not Supported
    Disk Number :     1
    Partition Number :     0
Name :     CREAZNMIND
    Type :     Volume
    Disk Identifier :     disk1s2
    Mount Point :     /Volumes/CREAZNMIND
    File System :     Mac OS Extended
    Connection Bus :     USB
    Writable :     Yes
    Universal Unique Identifier :     22415261-328A-3D43-80BC-241D1051E78C
    Capacity :     1.8 TB (2,000,054,956,032 Bytes)
    Free Space :     1.3 TB (1,393,188,286,464 Bytes)
    Used :     565.2 GB (606,866,669,568 Bytes)
    Number of Files :     851,286
    Number of Folders :     186,288
    Owners Enabled :     No
    Can Turn Owners Off :     Yes
    Can Be Formatted :     Yes
    Bootable :     Yes
    Supports Journaling :     Yes
    Journaled :     No
    Disk Number :     1
    Partition Number :     2
I am unable to boot in both firewire 400/800 and USB. What is confusing is that if another drive with a partition format for windows is installed the drive is recognized without a problem and mounts. I can see the HDD in Disk Utility but only the Disk itself is selectable but the partition is greyed out. The drive also cannot be checked or repaired in Disk Utility when connected with the firewire enclosure. I have tried this on two seperate apple computers, one even being an older PPC. Another thing that confuses me is that if I attached the HD to the computer using only a SATA/USB adapter cable, I can boot off the drive just fine. And when connected to a PPC the drive mounts seemlessly. I went into the shop where I purchased my enclosure and after some testing they said that it was because of the GPT Protection which is just GUI Partition Table. They said this is a somewhat common problem with Firewire enclosures and even LaCie reported this problem. Has anyone ever heard of this? Is there a problem between GUID and Firewire interfaces? If Intel Macs can only use GUID partitioning how can I get around this problem? I've looked around and it seems it's possible to install SL onto an APM drive by cloning from an Intel system, but why won't it just work the way it's supposed to? Any insights would be helpful....
Thanks in advance!

Journaled isn't a requirement for SL to boot. All I can suggest for the OP is to erase and repartition the HD; then, try again.

Boot off external HD

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