Boot to external CD-ROM

My slot loading drive is not working anymore so I got an enclosure to use for my IDE CDROM drive that I used for my PC. I connected it to my iMac's USB1.1 port and it is able to read CD's and all but I can't boot to it. Is this even possible? Thanks in advance.

Only external Firewire and some SCSI drives are able to boot Mac OS X. USB also would be extremely slow being 1.1 even if it could work.

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HP Envy 15 Won't boot from external dvd rom

Hi All,
My HP Envy is brand new (Envy 15 j151sa). The external DVD drive is brand new (HP dvd600). My model of the Envy does not have an internal CD/DVD drive
I want to boot from a live DVD.
I've read other posts and answers for similar queries and followed the suggestion.
On boot press F10 (BIOS setup) and the Boot Options settings are as follows...
a) Secure boot - disabled
b) Legacy boot - enabled.
c) Changed the legacy boot order to have the USB dvd rom as first in the list.
Save the setting.
Restart the PC.
On boot press F9
Displays the availabe list of devices (3) to boot from as
OS Boot Manager
Boot from EFI file
Notebook harddrive
There is no option to select the external DVD rom drive.
I have upgraded the BIOS to the latest HP recommended version.
I don't know what else to try.
I could really use some help now.
Thanks
This question was solved.
View Solution.

Your external DVD drive is operatying as it should.
The best place to find an answer on how to make the live CD is at the Debian forum. The disk you made apparentlydoes not have an MBR bootsector or a recognized EFI partition. Either of those is what is needed for the disk to be bootable and your notebook BIOS must be configured accordance with the choice of format type.
Personally I have always preferred using a utility like UNetbootln to make multiple "live" bootable Linux versions.
I don't bother with the hassle of DVD or CD media any more.
If you have a spare 32 or 64GB usb flashdrive, then you can put an incredible number of versions of Linux and troubleshooting utilities on it.
The economy of scale with usb flashdrive has gotten to the point where a 16 GB usb flashdrive is less expensive that DVD recordable media. Check out the prices at NewEgg.
Get your preferred version of Debian AMD64 live iso from here.
****Please click on Accept As Solution if a suggestion solves your problem. It helps others facing the same problem to find a solution easily****
2015 Microsoft MVP - Windows Experience Consumer

Booting from external CD-rom?

My 233mhz Cd-rom does not work. I have a tdk 5200F USB and I was wondering how I can get it to boot out of this good CD-rom.
Thank you

You should verify that you have the latest firmware, before installing new software. See the system profiler for details. What firmware do you need?
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86117
You may run Mac OS 10.3 on this machine. Mac OS X takes about 4gig. You can trim it down to 3gig with a custom install.
This will require a minimum of 128meg of ram. More is better. I'd suggest 256. You may put 512meg of ram in this machine. There are two memory slots. One must be Low Profile memory. Be sure you can return your memory cards. iMac memory cards are finicky.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/iMac-G3-G4/
All the tray loading iMac g3's, models a-d, are constructed the same.
While this article deals with adding memory, you should see the pram battery on the logic board when you get to step 17.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=43012
You should skip steps 17 to 20. Look for the pram battery instead.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=43013
Here is a good disassembly page:
http://www.macopz.com/columns/imacrepair/disassembly.html
The second article in this series has information on replacing the battery:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2584291
How To Upgrade Your iMac
http://www.djonmac.com/
The tray loading iMac requires the boot partition to be within 8gig. Since there are hidden partitions before the first visible partition, people recommend that you make the first visible partition 7.5 gig to 7.9gig. The machines support upto a 128gig Parallel ATA drive.
You should be able to use Unix symbolic links to 'move' some directory like /Users to the second visible partition.
Robert

Booting from external DVD-ROM

I have recently purchased Leopard for my server the only problem is, is that G5's do not have DVD drives a have a USB DVD drive is it possiable to boot from it?
Thanks

Hi
Are you sure? As far as I know every G5 came with at least a Combo Drive (DVD/CD-RW)? You can answer your own question by inserting the installer disk into the external drive, restart the G5, hold down the alt key and see if Disk Manager shows the disk as a valid bootable source. In fact you don't even have to do this. Insert the installer disk, go to Start up Disk in System Preferences and see if you can select it as a bootable source. Restart the G5, it will either work or not. Personally I think you may need a firewire connection rather than a USB one.
Tony

How can i install snow leopard on my mac G5 using a command line and booting from an external usb rom, since my disk i have is not a bootable media

How can i install snow leopard on my mac G5 using a command line and booting from an external usb rom, since my disk i have is not a bootable media

Hi.
You simply can't. Snow Leopard is compiled in Intel binary only.
Good Luck.

Problem to boot to an external cd rom toshiba

Hi,
I can't boot to my external CD-rom Toshiba.
Its name is not present in the boot list.but it work normally when I 'm in windows.
I want to install Ubuntu.so I must boot with live CD and install ubuntu.
Think to help me fastly

And why do you think this should work?
I don't know which notebook or desktop PC do you use but it depends on BIOS support.
Obviously your hardware doesnt support boot-up from external optical disc drive.
What do you need is MS-DOS access. That means you must start your PC in DOS mous and load MS-DOS driver for optical disc drive to have access to it.
Pretty complicated.

X121e can't boot from external usb cd rom

Hi all,
This has kept me busy all day. Read many threads and tried lots of things...but to no avail. I hooked up an external cd-rom drive tot my X121e and changed the boot order to start with the USB drive. Somehow it just doesn't want to boot from cd-rom....Played with the UEFI settings, tried different cd-roms and dvd-roms, but nothing works. It sounds like the X121e is rebooting itself when it reaches the cd-rom drive (the screen stays black so I can't tell for sure).
When I boot from a different laptop the drive works straight away.....
Did anyone succeed in booting the x121e from an external cd-rom drive?
Thanks in advance!!!
usb4life

Did you try an DVD drive instead? Do you have the most recent BIOS firmware?
I was able to boot my X121e from an external DVD writer but I havent't tried a CD-ROM.
What does happen if you try to boot? Can you be more verbose?
Are you able to bring up the boot device selection menu? Is the drive being listed?

Boot External CD ROM Satelite M45 s265

HI, pls help me ! is their a way to boot a external CDrom into my laptop. because my cdrom was damage/broken.
there is no usb boot in bios. pls help me so i can reformat my laptop.
thanks,
eumir

Only external Firewire and some SCSI drives are able to boot Mac OS X. USB also would be extremely slow being 1.1 even if it could work.

Boot Camp - External DVD Reader (Mac Compatible)

To all,
I am not able to get Boot Camp to load vista from the external CD-ROM since the internal one is totaly disconnected. It does nothing. It spins the CD when it restarts then continues on to loading the login screen.
Bare with me - this is the fun part -
I got a 24" white iMac. CD-ROM was stuck and refused to take in new CD's. Took it to Apple, they replaced it. I bring it back home 2 days later and the screen is dented. They fix that in 4 days. Now I am finally able to start installing Vista.
Put the CD in - nothing happens - it kicks it out!!!! Well - its brand new - its even a different brand than what was in there before.
I take it back to apple, i give the lady all the **** in the world because this is not supposed to happen, etc.
They decide to give me a new iMac. While I am waiting, the manager approaches me and give me the 13 cents which were found in the cd-rom drive (thanks to my kids)
So I appologize - totaly ignored her wanting $450 to replace it, so I went and bought a Sony external DVD reader, burner.
-- Problem --
Boot Camp, Front Row + the DVD player software won't work off the external drive.
I took the mac appart - disconnected the dvd-drive from the motherboard thinking that if its not there, then boot camp will attempt to run off the external drive.
Put it back together - and rebooted - everything came up fine until using front row or the dvd player.
Boot Camp still won't read the external drive - no errors nothing - it attempts then quits and moves to the login screen.
Guys - I need help - i make my living off Windows so not having access to it - its killing me.
Please do not recommend parallels or anything else like it.
I am willing to try anything at this point. Before I go and spend $450 i will rather buy a new machine.
HELP!!! Anyone Please!!!!

I doubt there is any way to get the external to work with the Windows install. It's magic that the internal works! However, since you are not afraid to rip the iMac apart, a Google of 'imac internal dvd drive' shows that you can get a replacement for well under $450.

Using External CD Rom drive to import music from CD to Itune

I have itunes 6.0 on an XP laptop, and an external TDK DVD/CDrom drive. Itunes imports music from CDs when I use the drive on the laptop, however, only imports links (seem like URL links) when I use the external drive to import music from a CD into a playlist.
I am trying to use the external CD rom drive for importing music into Itunes, but there seems to be a problem, or I have not checked some box or the other. Can someone help??
Thanks

First, Jaguar does not come on a DVD. The standard Jaguar release comes on two CDs. What you probably have is a gray color OEM DVD or a copy that was made for a specific Mac model and will not work with your computer. Furthermore, in order to run OS X on your computer you must first install a firmware update.
You also need at least 128 MBs of RAM for OS X and at least 3 GBs of free space on the hard drive during installation. Your particular model requires that OS X be installed on a drive or partition that is less than 8 GBs. If your hard drive is larger than 8 GBs it must be partitioned such that the first partition is no larger than 7.85 GBs and OS X must be installed in that partition. The drive must also be formatted Mac OS Extended (HFS+).
Furthermore, you cannot boot OS X from a USB drive, only from a Firewire drive.
You will need to get the correct Jaguar installers. You can purchase the right package at www.applerescue.com. Your particular model is compatible with Panther thru 10.3.9. Panther would be a better choice than Jaguar because it is much faster even on your iMac. However, OS X will not be very fast on your computer because it lacks CPU speed and video horsepower. If you continue to install OS X, then you should plan to install the maximum of 512 MBs of RAM that iMac supports.

Using an external cd-rom for re-installing the os X?

hello, i have a problem , my superdrive it`s not working, and i don`t want to replace the unit, i have an external cd-rom an want to know if i can re-installing or re-boot it from the external drive.
please help me,... i need to errase evrything from my ibook, because i want to install leopard.

The drive needs to be capable of reading DVDs to read the Mac OS X 10.5 DVD, and it should be a FireWire drive to use the disk for the installation.
(41013)

Installing from external dvd rom

Hi,
Is it possible to install solaris 10 from external dvd rom. If yes then how?
Thanks,
Javed

I just did this on a Sun E420, attaching a SCSI DVD-ROM to the external SCSI connector, so that it's on a different SCSI bus.
Did a probe-scsi-all to see the device.
Did a devalias cdrom to see what that path looks like
Did a devalias dvdrom <path to DVD like the cdrom>
boot dvdrom (worked)
to make the device alias permanent (devalias setting is lost after reset or power down) use nvalias command (like the devalias) and make sure the use-nvramrc? OBP env variable is true. (see online OBP docs).
If you have a x86/x64 system, this won't help.

Installing Tiger w/ External DVD ROM

I have an e-mac with a dud super drive, bought an external DVD Rom Drive, pop the disk in, It mounts, double click install, it says restart to start the instalation, i do, then it boots up like nothings different, no installation, I tried to restart holding down "c" and a weird screen comes up with some "apple basic" stuff and i have to restart I also changed to start up disk option and it didnt work. I'm runing 10.2.8, bought a new mac book with tiger and leopard software, I want to upgrade my good ol e-mac but cant! Please help!
Brad

Bradley Beef,
Welcome to the Apple Discussions!
Is the external DVD Firewire or USB? Only Firewire devices can serve as external boot drives for PowerPC (PPC) macs such as the eMac.
Holding the c key down at startup tells the Mac to try to boot from the internal optical drive. You want the option key, as described in Startup Manager: Select a Startup Volume. (You can also look at Magical Macintosh Key Sequences).
From your post, it does come across that you're using the Install discs from the Mac Book. Aside from the pesky legal detail that the Mac Book software is licensed only for use with the Mac Book, gray label OS X Install discs are model-specific and will only work with the model with which the discs were shipped (not to mention the Mac Book is an Intel CPU and the eMac a PPC CPU). You'll need the retail black-label Tiger or Leopard Install DVD to update the eMac.
Updating from 10.2.8 to 10.4.x will make your eMac feel much more responsive (assuming you have at least 512 MB RAM). There's a handy upgrade guide for Tiger in Gulliver - Tiger Upgrade Guide.

Externa cd rom drive

i need to buy an external cd rom drive but i cant find one that can work with tiger, do you know where i could find one?

re: Tiger2010 & OldSchoolApple:
To reply to two first-time posts, following a thread of slightly different
content, which original posting questions had been answered...
You should open a new thread containing your own questions and
cite your own circumstances; then the item would not appear to be
"answered" in the line-up of inquires in the Discussion your appears.
And, as users of Mac products, we cannot cite policy and have no
authority beyond unsubstantiated speculation (against forum rules)
to give you an answer regarding Apple Inc policy on their products
or any services you may have had performed by their agents; so
you may have to call Support or Sales support if your question is
about a product and you need a definite answer.
If you bought a product at retail, you probably have to take it back
to the point of sale, and discuss the matter there; or call ahead to
the store (or if Apple online, their main number in web page header)
to see about getting the matter taken care of under their rules.
Since you (both) +appear to have a mirrored-exact post and ask of+
+the same product+ I could easily surmise both were one person &
the answer here, from me would be the same. As Mac users, and
not employees or representatives of Apple, we can't answer policy
or return or credit matters. And there is a matter of protocol involved.
You may have to check for additional driver support from the drive's
manufacturer web site; to see if there is anything different. Or check
the software if any was included with the third-party drive, and read
to see if there is a reason to believe it is needed at all.
And, an answer does depend on what you intend to do with the product.
Some external drive units are best if they have their own power supply
and do not depend on the computer; and if they are to boot an OS X
from the drive, to install or repair the computer software, then be sure
the product you choose has the correct design within it to do so.
One answer would be to return the product and get something known to
be more supportive of use with a Mac, either Intel or PPC-based, per
the needs of respective circumstances and needs in each environment.
However that works out...
Good luck & happy computing!
{edited}

Installing Leopard using an external dvd rom

I am unable to install Leopard on my iMac G5 due to a defective superdrive. Can i install it using an external dvd rom? pls HELP!

If it uses FireWire it should work. Boot while pressing Option. When he cursor changes to a arrow, select the DVD, then click the straight right-pointing arrow.

Boot to external CD-ROM

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