Boot up options (other than internal/external hard-drives)

Hello,
Here's a strange thought/question: does anyone know if I can use a 32-gigabyte SD card and/or 32-gigabyte USB drive to boot up a Mac (with OS, tools, documents, applications, etc.)? What devices can I use to boot up a MacBook Pro?
Thanks!
Reason: I just got this great new MacBook Pro (late 2008), with 4-gigabytes of RAM, 320-gigabyte hard-drive (internal), and 2.8GHz dual core chip (15-inch). I want to install Windows Vista Ultimate on the system but I've already pre-formated the hard-drive with four hard-partitions: the first for main use, the second for iTunes storage, the third for Windows Boot Camp installation & VM's, the fourth for second Mac OS X installation for repair.

Hi,
The webpage you pointed out is only a tiny bit old. I've got Pacifist. It's a great application.
I was thinking of putting the OS on a SD card through the PCI ExpressCard/34 slot on the side of my MacBook Pro.
I have no knowledge whether a Mac can be booted from a card reader/SD card, never heard of it.
Not sure if speed will be a factor or not.
Speed will indeed be slower than using external HDs, regardless how much SD cards have improved lately.
I imagine that the same instructions should suffice as what was pointed out in the link.
Thanks,
I'll try that and report if that works. I'd definitely want to install a number of helpful applications that help me defrag, troubleshoot, and fix the OS onto the USB Thumb drive.
Please report back of the outcome of this 'experiment'. As said above, the ability or not to boot from SD card would be a very valuable information not only for me.
Good Luck
Stefan

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Not at all.
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Reading between tea leaves sometimes leaves some things to imagination.
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On a Mac there is no BIOS. They use EFI instead which doesn't allow that.
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Hi, Jeff --
Well, I think my problem is finally solved, thanks (partly) to your help. Just to help other folks who have this problem, I'm going to state briefly how I fixed it:
-- I did an Erase and Install on the Seagate AFTER spending all day burning 30 CDs with the archived files I'd taken off the Mac but didn't want to lose.
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But when I boot up from my MacBook Pro (running Mountain Lion) and from my Macbook Air (also running Mountain Lion), I can't seem to do it. I hold the "option" key when starting and I get the option to start from the computer's HD or from the external firewire Snow Leopard drive. When I choose the Snow Leopard drive, it crashes and gives me that black screen with the kernel (?) message in several languages that I need to hold down the Power key to turn off the computer and reboot.
How can I get my MacBook Pro or my MacBook Air to boot up from the Snow Leopard external hard drive? (Once again, it DOES work with a Mac that has Snow Leopard as its OS).

Richard Signes2 wrote:
The question is: How do I start up my MacBook Air (or MacBook Pro) from an external FireWire Bootable hard drive with Snow Leopard on it? When I start up either one with the "option" key pressed, I get the option to start up with the external Snow Leopard hard drive, but when I select it, it crashes, as described above.
You can't if the Mac is a Late 2011 and later, perhaps if it's a Early 2011 (as some came with 10.6 and some with 10.7) and it should be possible for all Intel Mac's earlier than Early 2011.
Also, like what has occurred in the past, Apple does eventually issues a firmware update in later OS X versions so that earlier OS X versions, despite the Mac previously being able to boot from them, won't any longer. However far as I know Apple hasn't done this quite yet, but will one day.
Baring those issues, if you installed 10.6 on a external drive using a machine specific black/gray disk from another Mac, it has hardware drivers for that model/year of Mac only.
If you used the 10.6 white retail disks from Apple, it only has hardware drivers for all previous Intel Mac's that came originally with 10.6.2 or earlier from the factory. Mac's with 10.6.3 or later on the drive from the factory have different hardware drivers, thus not on the 10.6.3 white retail disk.
To find out what OS X version came on your machines, use the free MacTracker and use your model indentifier in the Apple menu More > Info (aka System Profiler)
So for those Mac's that originally came with 10.6.3 or later, machine specific disks must be gotten from Apple, or if your really talented, it's possible to create a univeral 10.6-10.6.8 install disk by combing the 10.6.3 image with the 10.6.8 combo update which will boot on any Intel Mac if the firmware permits and the hardware drivers are compable.
There is a method to bypass the firmware and install on Mac's that are Early 2011/Late 2011 via Target Disk Mode, or via taking the drive out of the machine as some Late 2011's use the same hardware drivers as the Early 2011 machines (only a processor bump basically)
How to revert your Mac to Snow Leopard
For the MacAir, you can install 10.6 via a USB thumb drive, of course provided it has the hardware drivers.
http://www.maciverse.com/install-os-x-snow-leopard-from-usb-flash-drive.html
So in your case you likely should be rather looking at running Snow Leopard in a virtual machine program in Mountain Lion, which MichealLax over at MacRumors has perfected a technique.
Windows in BootCamp or Virtual Machine?
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1365439

What is the best way to manage itunes content using an external hard drive connected to airport extreme?

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The best solution would be two different types of backups, one local (in your own home) and one elsewhere. So, option 3 is the "best" solution.
I, personally, use Crashplan to backup all of my computers because it's much more convenient than an external hard drive.
With an external hard drive, you can either use Time Machine to create the historical/incremental backups OR you can create a bootable clone periodically using SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner.
I don't know of any way to make the machines mirror images of one another - as far as I know, the best you could do is transfer data from one to the other at time of purchase and then use something like DropBox to keep files in sync.
~Lyssa

Running Lightroom - NAS or external Hard drive?

I am a photographer currently running a windows laptop with LR and PS (CC) and using the internal hard drive on my Laptop to store all my images (24k of the blighters!).
I currently do all my editing on this laptop but it is starting to 'creak' under the weight of all those images. I have decided I want to move all the images off and on to a storage/backup configuration and use the internal hard drive of the laptop purely for processing power to drive photoshop and lightroom etc.
I have also recently bought a Mac desktop computer which I run from my upstairs home office/bedroom and have just installed LR/PS (CC) on it as well - but havent started using it yet!
I will probably do most of my editing on the MAC upstairs but there will also be occasion where I will want to use my laptop with Lightroom for when I do tethered photography shoots and to do a bit of editing when i'm away in hotels and occasionally when im being lazy and want to edit downstairs in my front room at home.
I have looked at the option of getting 2 external hard drives with an enclosure and plugging them into the back of the MAC (USB3) and using 'carbon copy clone' so the 2 disks are mirrored.
I would then use another external hardrive to plugin into the back of the enclosure to do a weekly backup (take this off site).
The only problem with this is that when I want to use my Laptop I have to take the hard drives out of the MAC and then plugin them
into the Laptop it in order to access the latest catalog and images? - and taking the hard drives and enclosure around with me kind of defeats the point of having the laptop?
So the options I have considered is to either:
Add a 'WD My Book' off the external hardrives so I can access the catalog/images wirelessly from the cloud from my laptop - but not sure how this would work and also
       how would the MAC get its latest catalog changes from the WD My Book (after I have made changes to the catalog when using the laptop)?
   2. The other option I recently looked at was the NAS route....which kind of makes sense as presumably there will only
       be one catalog residing on the NAS which I download to the either the Laptop or Mac depending on which I want to use
       and then access the images from the NAS when I do my editing. Presumabaly I then have to do some sort of synchronisation
       of the catalog when I have finished editing and move between the laptop and MAC?
The other question is how do I access the NAS? I dont currently have a home network. I do have a wireless
router in my front room downstairs from which I access broadband internet - I then use a repeater (poor signal) when im using the MAC in the office upstairs
- wouldnt accessing the NAS wirelessly be slow? (Dont really want to start using cables around the house)
Will there be probelms moving betweek Windows and Apple OS environments?
Any ideas or help with this would be hugley appreciated as my brain is starting to fry and I just want to get back to taking photographs :-) !!
Thanks in advance
Chris

If all you want to do on the laptop is a bit of editing and then print when you get home, the Smart Preview method described above will be fine.
There is no problem going from windows to mac.
The problem you might find is that when you come home from a job, you need to transfer the files to the external drive and then show LR on the mac where the files are...pretty easy but you have to remember to do it before you start mucking around.
The other solution that a FEW of us use, is to put the LR catalog files on Dropbox. This allows you to have the current catalog always on both computers. The only drawback I know of is that you absolutely must carefully let the machine update dropbox before you close it (or at least before you open the file on the other computer). If you do that and use smart preview, you will find you can do almost anything. Remember, you still need to get the files to the external drive when you get home (first step) and then use LR on the mac to "find folders"
If you DO want to ocassionally print from the laptop, you could carry a USB key with the original files copied to it from the external drive (I often take the last couple of months worth with me)...name the USB drive the same name as the external drive and LR will no know the difference...
It feels complicated at first, but once you get into the LR mindset it will work just fine.
Tom

Boot up options (other than internal/external hard-drives)

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