Booting from a USB drive

I have an urgent problem.
As I had a fatal problem with my orignal MBP It's currently getting repaired. However I have my backup with the latest LION on the timemachine drive!
I can now use my brothers MBP but he's running Snow Leopard and not Lion!
Someone gave me the advise to boot from an external USB drive and like this I could use all my saved stuff on my brothers Laptop without bothering his Harddrive at all!
SO I copied all my stuff to this external USB drive and tried to boot pressing "alt" at the start but my external HD wouldn't show up.
How can I get this external drive to act as a bootable drive?
I have the Timemachine Drive and the USB drive connected to the MBP but I can't boot from either the time machine drive nor the USB dirve!
Please help!!

You need to partiton and format the drive properly for OS X. You then need to install OS X on the drive using a version that can boot the computer.
Drive Preparation
1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select the USB hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Afte formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Complete the OS X installation.
Once you've installed a working OS X that boots the computer you can then go about the task of restoring your software from your TM backup using the Setup Assistant or using Migration Assistant.

Similar Messages

Booting from external USB drive

I was wondering if there is any way to boot from a USB drive that I have? I partitioned the drive, erased it, and its basically ready to go. But I can't install Mac OS X on it because it says that I cannot reboot from the drive.
I know that iBook G4s generally can't boot from a USB devise but is there any way to get around this?

If you're computer is having kernel panics there's a conflict; either software or hardware. 2GB of free space isn't enough but I haven't seen anything that suggests KPs are caused by too little free space. Your computer should start fine with 2GB free. It may have problems after a period of use but it would startup and run.
Try starting in Safe Mode. If successful move some of your files to the external drive and then restart normally. If it KPs again, restart in safe mode and disable all startup items in System Preferences>Accounts>youraccount and restart. If it KPs again go through the linked troubleshooting steps by Dr. Smoke step by step. That's the only way to resole your problem.

T440 - Problem booting from Win7 USB drive

Dear Forum I have a wonderful new T440 here and am wishing to load Windows 7 x64 from a bootable usb memory stick, which I've always used and works fine on other computers (tested again this morning).However when I try to boot my T440 from this drive, I can bring up the temporary boot menu and see the usb drive in the list, but when I select it (press enter) the screen just flashes and comes back to the temporary boot menu. IT will not accept my memory stick! I tried with another stick with Win7 on , but got the same problem. Interestingly I also have a X240 here and this behaves exactly the same. So I don't think it is the USB Drive and its not the T440. What can I do. Just out of interest I was able to boot from a Windows 8 prepared USB drive... which is great but I don't want to load win8, I need to load win7. help! Thanks

Hey, i just bought a new T440p and i have the same issue with booting from a USB.
Thing is, i already prepared the stick (FAT32), and enabled the secure boot. I read onlinde that with Windows 7 (which I try to install) i shouldnt enable the CSM Support, is that right?
Are there any other things i need to change in order to boot from the USB?
thanks in advance
Noel

Booting from a USB drive when the System Volume has FileVault2 turned on

Hi, I need to perform some maintenance on my primary volume. (10.9.1 on a mac Mini 2011).
During installation, I enabled FileVault2 to protect my files.
Now when I attempt to run DriveGenius or similar, the tools will demand to boot from a different volume to access the drive.
However, when I boot the system, no other boot choice shows up, neither my Mavericks install USB stick nor my backup clone (created with SmartBackup 3.5.3, used to work on older versions before 10.9)
When selecting "Start Volume" under systems preferences, no other volume will show as a choice, even when the volumes mentioned are attached.
Please advise
TIA

Okay just clarifying my INTERNAL hard drive is most likely dead, I am looking to install and boot from my external hard drive. According to this AHT article
Before you begin
Important: If your Mac was released after June 2013, you will use Apple Diagnostics rather than Apple Hardware Test (AHT). See Using Apple Diagnostics for instructions.
Consider doing some preliminary troubleshooting to determine if your issue is related to hardware. You can try to determine if the cause of your issue is related to hardware or software by following Isolating issues in Mac OS X. AHT can help determine which hardware component may be causing the issue.
Before starting AHT, be sure to disconnect all external devices except the keyboard, mouse, display, and Ethernet adapter. Also disconnect any external optical drives.
My goal is to find a way to boot from my external drive.
"Won't matter, as long as you have the Disc.
To make it botable, you will need to set the Partition Map Scheme (GUID Partition Table) and Format it (Mac OS Extended Journaled) before installing OS X."
The disc or the drive? I assume you mean the drive but according to the document that should be removed.

Slow boot from external usb drive

I just upgraded my daughter's macbook to the latest fixes on her internal drive. I reformatted her external LaCie drive to Mac OS Extended(Journaled) and did a restore. I did notice that there are less files on the internal than the external drive when comparing immediately after the restore. When I try to boot from that drive, it takes 10 minutes to boot the system. It takes about 7 minutes before I even hear any drive activity. In the past this system used to take about 2 minutes to boot at most vs 30 seconds from the internal drive. I have repaired permissions without seeing any effect. I did attach another USB drive that had a copy of her old OSC 10.5.8 image and that booted in less than 2 minutes. Any thoughts on what could be causing the long boot time on the external drive? I have seen comments on GUID formatting. Doesn't that come automatically with Mac OS Extended(Journaled) on an Intel machine? Should I have selected an option when doing the format to specify GUID? I did run a verify Disk as well and the extrnal checked out without any problems.

+" ... and did a restore ..."+
How, of what, from where, to where?
+" ... I have seen comments on GUID formatting. Doesn't that come automatically with Mac OS Extended(Journaled) on an Intel machine? ..."+
No, it does not happen automatically when you format the drive. GUID is a partition type, not a format. You specify GUID partition scheme at the time you partition the drive. Formatting is a separate operation, occurring after partitioning. Drives that will be used to boot an Intel Mac must be GUID partition scheme and formatted as Mac OS Extended Journaled.

RS482M4-ILD: How to boot from a USB Drive? Can't find the option in BIOS!!!

Hi!
I have a USB Pen Drive as well as External USB 2.0 HDD. I'd like to know how to enable the Boot from USB Option in my mobo: RS482M4-ILD BIOS.
I have seen everywhere but, still couldn't find the option.
Thanks in Advance.
Regards,
The GodFather

Hi:
I believe you need to to into the BIOS and change it to legacy mode to be able to boot from any other device than the hard drive.

Booting from same USB drive on multiple computers

I would like to use a single USB drive to boot on multiple computers (i.e. I can unplug it and plug it into another computer, and it should work fine).
Right now I have two computers, one with no hard disk (it's an Intel D945GCLF actually) and one with a hard disk as usual. I have set up grub to boot fine from the harddisk-less computer (and that's what I do my work on) but the USB drive cannot boot on the other computer. Grub says it's loading stage 1.5 and then error 2 comes out. I think it's because grub is configured to run from (hd0,0) but, in my other computer, my USB disk is (hd1,0). Does anyone have any ideas, and has anyone successfully used this setup before?
Thanks.

If you're computer is having kernel panics there's a conflict; either software or hardware. 2GB of free space isn't enough but I haven't seen anything that suggests KPs are caused by too little free space. Your computer should start fine with 2GB free. It may have problems after a period of use but it would startup and run.
Try starting in Safe Mode. If successful move some of your files to the external drive and then restart normally. If it KPs again, restart in safe mode and disable all startup items in System Preferences>Accounts>youraccount and restart. If it KPs again go through the linked troubleshooting steps by Dr. Smoke step by step. That's the only way to resole your problem.

Macbook 2012 not booting from internal drive but booting from external usb drive

hi everyone!!
here is what happened:
i have worked all day on my macbook pro, normally. when i got home and turned it on (i always power it off for rolling with it) it just didn't load the OS.
i run mavericks on a i7 mid 2012 macbook pro 13". it had an accident on last december and fell on the ground, but i've changed the hdd and it worked normally until last week when this happened.
i have a copy of my system on a usb drive and tried to start up from it and it worked.
i took my hdd from inside the lap top and started from it (yes, the same hard disk that was inside the machine) and it worked.
i took the macbook to an apple store and the "apple genius" that was there started up my machine from inside with another hdd running yosemite that they have in the store for testing.
today i bought a new hdd and put it in. but i can't format it or install the system. i had these 2 errors on disk utility
"partition failed with the error: wiping volume data to prevent future accidental probing failed"
and
"restore failure an error (32) occurred while copying. (broken pipe)
so:
it loads from my internal drive, but only when its connected via usb
it loaded the apple store drive internally
it does not format my new drive nor install the system on it
ANY suggestions, please??? it's really difficult to me to solve this problem...
thanks a lot!!!

Must be a bad SATA cable undetected by Apple Techs. A result of the drop but they are also quite fragile.
Disturbing the cable can cause it to work for a while. Cheap repair at iFixIt.

[SOLVED]Error when trying to boot from a usb drive

I have installed arch linux on a usb drive.
When I am trying to load it , I get the following error :
ERROR: '/dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201211' device did not show up after 30 seconds
Any ideas?
Thank you.
Last edited by skiabox (2012-11-16 19:55:10)

Use a BitTorrent client instead of a ddl (direct download link). This way it's less prone to errors, because it's checked while it's being downloaded.
Either that, or check its MD5 against the one from the Download page.
There's also this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Be … ion_medium
Note: The quality of optical drives and the discs themselves varies greatly. Generally, using a slow burn speed is recommended for reliable burns. If you are experiencing unexpected behaviour from the disc, try burning at the lowest speed supported by your burner.
Last edited by DSpider (2012-11-16 15:13:55)

How do I boot from a USB drive with Leopard using a Lion iMac?

I'm looking to wave good bye to my MacBook Pro running Leopard and upgrade.
However, I need to keep a version of Leopard so I can run certain Audio Units that won't run on Snow Leopard or Lion.
I have made a bootable drive with Leopard on it, but I can't get it to boot on my iMac running Lion. It boots fine using the MacBook though.
What am I doing wrong here? Is what I'm looking to do possible any more, or do I need to configure the drive for use with a Lion machine somehow?
Any help would be very much appreciated...

Clearly not supported by Apple but as an Engineer I would like to know what the barriers are.
I believe that pre-installed Lion has extra disk partitions - probably for Utilities and software 'repair'. Having extra disk partitions is not new for Apple - they did it on some Macs long before OS X but these did not stop booting from other OSs or replacement with new single partition disks.
I suspect there are ways of doing it but it would probably invalidate the guarantee and might require removal of Lion, disk format, partition and reinstallation of OSs. Even then the reinstalled Lion may not work. I suspect it is only a matter of time before somebody posts a low risk way of doing this.

Laptop not booting from UEFI usb drive

Hi,
unfortunately I delete the whole hard drive so I'm trying to reinstall it. I'm using a Windows 8.1 UEFI usb drive (successfully used on other computers) but I got the following error on booting:
No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key
I don't have any selectable options in bios (i.e. legacy / secure boot). My bios version is F1C. It happens with any USB port (I tried them all).
The same happens with a Windows 7 UEFI usb key.
It works with a non-UEFI drive but I want to use UEFI...
Thanks a lot
riccardo

There are no Windows 8 or 8.1 drivers for your notebook.
"It works with a non-UEFI drive but I want to use UEFI..." Want to and can do don't always work out.
****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

HP Pav 500-205t Desktop, How to access advance boot options, to boot from a USB drive

I have tried Esc, F1, F2, Delete & F12 without sucess. Previous HP computers this has never been an issue.

CocoJoe, welcome to the forum.
I believe that you want to continuously tap F10 at the HP Logo.
Please click "Thumbs Up" if I have helped you and click "Accept as Solution" if your problem is solved.
Signature:
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HP 10 Plus; Android-Kit Kat; 1.0 GHz Allwinner A31 ARM Cortex A7 Quad Core Processor ; 2GB RAM Memory Long: 2 GB DDR3L SDRAM (1600MHz); 16GB disable eMMC 16GB v4.51
HP Omen; i7-4710QH; 8 GB memory; 256 GB San Disk SSD; Win 8.1
HP Photosmart 7520 AIO
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Intelligence is God given; Wisdom is the sum of our mistakes!
I am not an HP employee.

Hard drive dead/Boot from external hard drive?

My hard drive failed and I need a new one. For the time being, I'd prefer not to open up my iMac and replace the internal hard drive. I have an external USB hard drive and I cannot install OSX onto this drive (strangely, it takes the first disc but not the second).
Is it possible to boot and run an iMac G5 from an external hard drive? If so, what is required for hardware and what steps need to be taken?
If not, what course of action would you recommend?

It is very easy to boot an iMac from an external drive, but the drive should be a Firewire drive. Get one, then get SuperDuper!, which will enable you to clone your data and system to it. You can then choose the external firewire as your boot drive and operate without any problems.
Apparently, there are ways to boot from a USB drive, but they are complicated and a firewire drive is very straightforward and fast.
Let us know how you make out,

Running Arch from a usb drive[SOLVED]

I am trying to install arch on a usb drive with ext3 format. I have entered root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/... on the kernel line and in /etc/fstab file (as mentioned in the wiki). On booting I am dropped to a limited shell with few linux commands. On running 'blkid' there, I find that the fixed computer hard disk is detected as sda1,2 etc and usb drive is not being detected at all. The results are similar if I use root=/dev/disk/by-label/..
How can I boot from the usb drive.
Last edited by rnarch (2012-03-24 15:38:08)

My menu.lst:
# (0) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux
root (hd0,0)
#kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-id/usb-Kingston_DT_101_G2_001CC0EC32C7BAB1B7DE00ED-0:0-part1 ro
#initrd /boot/kernel26.img
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/disk/by-id/usb-Kingston_DT_101_G2_001CC0EC32C7BAB1B7DE00ED-0:0-part1 ro
initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img
# (1) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux Fallback
root (hd0,0)
#kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-id/usb-Kingston_DT_101_G2_001CC0EC32C7BAB1B7DE00ED-0:0-part1 ro
#initrd /boot/kernel26-fallback.img
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/disk/by-id/usb-Kingston_DT_101_G2_001CC0EC32C7BAB1B7DE00ED-0:0-part1 ro
#kernel /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=0811 type=ext3 ro
initrd /boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img
and mkinitcpio.conf HOOKS variable:
HOOKS="base udev pata scsi sata usb filesystems"
Hope those would help, good luck!

Booting from external usb3 drive

Hi, I am trying to boot Linux from an external USB3 drive.
Here are the symptoms.
1. I have uefi boot disabled.
2. I connected a Toshiba USB3 drive to an USB2 port. The device is NOT recognized as a bootable device under Legacy Boot Devices list hence I cannot boot from the USB drive.
3. If I boot from internal HDD, then I can access the USB3 drive without any problems.
4. Plugged in an external USB3 Docking Device to the USB2 socket.
5. Then the USB3 Docking Device is recognized as a Legacy Boot Device and I can boot from the Docking Device.
6. Installed USB3 PCIe card.
7. Connected the USB3 Docking Device to USB3 port.
8. Now I the Docking Device fails to appear as a Legacy Boot Device.
9. Connected the USB3 Docking Device back to the USB2 port and straight away it is now recognized as a Legacy Boot Device.
I would appreciate if any one can give some hints on how to get the USB3 devices recognized as legacy boot devices.
Many thanks.

gdesilva wrote:
Hi, I am trying to boot Linux from an external USB3 drive.
Here are the symptoms.
1. I have uefi boot disabled. (did you mean secure boot?) Did you enable Legacy support?
2. I connected a Toshiba USB3 drive to an USB2 port. The device is NOT recognized as a bootable device under Legacy Boot Devices list hence I cannot boot from the USB drive
3. If I boot from internal HDD, then I can access the USB3 drive without any problems.
4. Plugged in an external USB3 Docking Device to the USB2 socket. This won't help
5. Then the USB3 Docking Device is recognized as a Legacy Boot Device and I can boot from the Docking Device.
6. Installed USB3 PCIe card.
7. Connected the USB3 Docking Device to USB3 port.
8. Now I the Docking Device fails to appear as a Legacy Boot Device.
9. Connected the USB3 Docking Device back to the USB2 port and straight away it is now recognized as a Legacy Boot Device.
I would appreciate if any one can give some hints on how to get the USB3 devices recognized as legacy boot devices.
Many thanks.
Help us to help you by posting the following information.
1. The full Model No. and Product No. of the desktop PC - see This HP web document if you don't how to locate the model number and\or product number.
Enter the BIOS after you have setup the bootable Linux hard disk as shown in the following video andenable usb 3.0 configuration in Pre-OS if it is available in the BIOS. That will enable you to use the USB 3.0 port to boot your usb3 external hard disk with Linux installed.
Which flavor of Linux? The video explains how to do this with Ubuntu.
****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 a USB drive

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