Booting from a USB DVD drive

hello,
i kept searching for solutions to my problem for hours but i didn't find an answer to my question.
I want to install windows 7 on my 2007 macbook pro (yes pretty old...) but my optical drive is dead and i don't have bootcamp 5 so i can't create a USB disk and boot from it . so i want to know if it's possible to install win from a usb external drive because i really need it .
thank you

aycarambaboy wrote:
so i want to know if it's possible to install win from a usb external drive because i really need it .
Connect the external drive to the MBP and start it with the OPTION key down. Then select the external HDD.
Ciao.

Similar Messages

Can a Lombard boot from a USB DVD Drive?

Hi,
As the title states really, is there a way I can do it?
Cheers
Craig

Craig,
You are correct that you cannot boot an OSX USB drive to a PPC (PowerPC) computer but this will not be necessary to install the software on the HD.
However, let me ask a few more questions:
-Which model eMac do you have? For example, in your System Profiler, it should report 'Model Identifier: PowerMac4,4' if you have the 800MHz or 1.0GH eMac released in 2003. Depending on your model, only certain versions of OSX will boot your eMac.
-Are the 10.3 and 10.4 OSX DVDs you have retail, full-install versions, or are they machine-specific, meaning they came bundled with a particular computer?
-Do you wish to install MacOS 9 on the Lombard?
OWC does ship International and I believe they are very fast. Please email them for specifics.
You might consider spending a few more dollars for this combo FireWire/USB2.0 HD enclosure. I have a few and they are excellent; it has the FireWire Oxford 911 chipset plus USB 2.0. Using the FireWire connection, you could install OSX, then reboot your eMac to the Lombard's HD to make sure everything works. If using USB, you can install the software but cannot boot the eMac from the USB HD.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MOTGFWU2OB/
It would be nice if your Lombard had a DVD-ROM drive; then if you ever had to reinstall OSX on the Lombard, you would not have to go through all these hoops. Take a look at this guide and see if you would like to replace your old optical drive. It really is just three or four small screws to remove. The new optical drive will have a generic bezel/faceplate already attached so it won't quite match the old drive.
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/PBG3/oem_combo_drives/build_guide/build_combodrive.html
Message was edited by: jpl

How do I boot from a USB flash drive?

I have two different Toshiba laptops. In the BIOS settings I only see the following options.
Laptop 1:
CD/DVD
FDD
LAN
HDD1/SSD1
Laptop 2:
HDD1/SSD1
HDD2/SSD2
eSATA HDD
CD/DVD
FDD
LAN
Is it possible to make either computer boot from a USB flash drive?
Thanks in advance for any help,
yeto

FDD (Floppy Disk Drive) equates to USB in my Toshiba laptops. Seems like it's taking some BIOS designers a long time to catch up with the rest of the computer world!
C.B.
Toshiba Sat. C75D-B7260 Win 8.1 64 Bit--Toshiba Sat. L775D-S7132 Win 7 HP SP1 64 Bit and Win 10 PRO Technical Preview--Toshiba Sat. L305-S5921 Win Vista SP2 32 Bit

Booting from an external DVD drive

I have a 2006 Intel iMac with a Samsung model SE-208 USB DVD drive attached to it. How can I boot from this drive instead of using the internal DVD drive.

Everytime I try to load a DVD-RW disk, it gets stuck in the drive. That's why I am trying to boot from the external DVD drive. When I try to boot from the external DVD drive, it doesn't even show up when I press the option key on startup.
I spoke to a friend of mine who just bought a new iMac with the external Superdrive. It works fine. She can boot from it no problem and it only runs from the USB port.
All of my DVD-RW's mount on the desktop no problem from the external USB burner.

I have a MacBook pro late 2011 version it's not booting up so I am trying to boot from a USB recovery drive but when I select it nothing happens it jus goes to the restore options

I have a MacBook pro late 2011 version it's not booting up so I am trying to boot from a USB recovery drive but when I select it nothing happens it jus goes to the restore options

Bahamaguy wrote:
I have a MacBook pro late 2011 version it's not booting up ....
So what you want is to be able to boot from OS X and retrieve your files
Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive
Of course if it's not booting up, it's easier to fix in place
..Step by Step to fix your Mac
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents#/
...so I am trying to boot from a USB recovery drive but when I select it nothing happens it just goes to the restore options
"Recovery HD" is a partition on your boot drive which you option or commnad r key held at boot time to get into and then repair the Macintish HD partition.
If you have this on a external USB thumb drive, then that's all it is, no OS X, programs or files.
If your talking a USB external drive, it has to be a OS X bootable clone made with Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper and the option key held at boot time gives you that boot option.
Most commonly used backup methods
So what your saying is you have a external clone and by holding the option key down at boot all you get is it directly going to Recovery HD?
There is no Startup Manager option to choose what to boot from?
This could mean Apple changed something, or your external bootable clone isn't one, or the wrong software used so it's not being recognized by Startup Manager as a bootable option.
What did you use to make the external OS X USB bootable drive?

Booting V245 off USB DVD drive

How do I boot V245 off USB DVD drive?

Apparently cannot be done on Sparc, only on x86.

SA30-414 boot from the USB floppy drive

Hi All!
I'm tryin to get my my satellite A30-414 to boot from the USB floppy drive and enter the dos mode, but all i get is a black screen (without a cursor, of course!!), and then the windows XP logon page directly. Can you tell me whether this model has a boot device menu hotkey?
Also, I may have permanently changed some boot configurations (namely by holding down the F12 at startup and then the F2 key at a later try) with my attempts to get the machine to boot from floppy drive: now even when the floppy drive is not connected i get this awkward black screen and then, after a few seconds, the windows logon page. How can I acceed the setup menu and check?
Thanks in advance for your help!

Thanks to you all for your support!
Now I'll tell how this problem originated. I connected the standard usb fdd with a standard DOS boot disk to which I had added a firmware upgrade for my DVDrom unit. I powered on and held the F12 key down expecting to see the boot device selection menu, instead i got a black screen for a few seconds and then the winXP logon page. At this point i rebooted and held down the F2 key with the same purpose. But the computer went into some kind of hybernation and by pressing the power-on button it shut down.
From that moment on startup I don't see the BIOS POST page anymore: countless seconds of black screen and then the WinXP logon page. The most optimistic explanation to this is that i inadvertently changed the boot order, so it searches for floppy first, and when it doesn't find it then it goes to C:\. Does it sound logical?

I have a 2012 Mini with a fusion drive that won't boot from a usb cloned drive. It came with 10.8.2 pre installed. I have zapped the PRAM and reset the SMC. Any thoughts?

I have a 2012 Mini with a fusion drive that won't boot from a usb cloned drive. It came with 10.8.2 pre installed. I have zapped the PRAM and reset the SMC. Any thoughts?

When I tried using a recently downloaded (from the App store) version of MtLion 10.8.2 (12C60) I could NOT get the new MacMini to install or boot from a USB I had previously made. I was however able to use the Recovery Mode of the MacMini to create a bootable SSD which I had installed. The problem arose when I went back into Recovery DU as it saw the seperate drives (SSD & HD) as a broken Fusion Drive. Interestingly DU from the boot volume had NO issues and reported NO faults. It was the Recovery DU that identified the faulty Fusion Drive configuration. At this point I am definately out of my depth but my speculation is that the Recovery Volume is being used in some fashion to form the method or pattern that DU assigns files to the drives, System Report sees the drives as seperate volumes with all their individual characteristics.
Disk Utility did not make a bootable USB, I don't have or use CCC or Super Duper.
Here is the longer version I've been compiling:
Having bought a late 2012 Mac Mini(6,2) i7 2.66GHZ with the standard 1TB 5400 HD and 4GB of RAM (base model) I immediately decided to install a Mercury Elite 6g 240GB SSD and up the RAM to 16GB. I received both shipments on the same day and had all my new toys in front of me. After following the video advice on OWC’s website for the installation of the second drive I started the mini and formatted the SSD to accept the OS from Recovery on the original HD. This MacMini shipped with 10.8.2 (12C2034) as the OS, the normal build of 10.8.2 is (12C60). Having used Recovery Disk Utility to format the SSD it came back with an error that DU could’t Repair. I went ahead and installed the OS on the SSD and the Mini booted normally from both drives. The issue I encountered with this setup was that iMovie encountered an “unexpected error” and would not save a completed project. I therefore decided to figure the drive issue out because I suspect the new Fusion File Management software didn’t like my configuration with drives that Recovery DU saw as needing to be “fixed”. After spending some time on the phone with both OWC and Apple Support I took the plunge and used Internet Recovery Disk Utility and allowed both drives to be “fixed” after which DU created a Fusion Drive (Logical Drive) that I then ran Repair Disk on and it showed up as a single drive in DU. It works perfectly as described by Apple’s site:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5446
Having checked the Link Speed and Negotiated Speed they both show as 6g so I’m pleased not to have lost performance due to it being fuzed to a 3g 5400 drive. The biggest drawback is that Apple’s Fusion Management only allows for 1 additional partition and I would have preferred more than that.
I have sourced some additional information here:
http://blog.macsales.com/15619-special-note-for-adding-an-ssd-to-a-2012-mac-mini ?
http://blog.macsales.com/15619-special-note-for-adding-an-ssd-to-a-2012-mac-mini ?
http://blog.macsales.com/15619-special-note-for-adding-an-ssd-to-a-2012-mac-mini ?
http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/08/05/undocumented-corestorage-commands/
If anyone has a factory Fusion Drive could you please post the Link and Negotiated Speeds of both drives? This information can be found in Apple > About This Mac > More Info… > System Report > Serial ATA and the drives should show up as discrete drives with their info listed separately.

Cannot boot to Windows disc from external USB DVD drive.

I have a MacBook Pro 17" Early 2011 8,3. I have tried to use bootcamp to install Windows 7 from a external USB DVD drive. All I get, like many people, is a black screen with a blinking cursor, as if it never makes it to boot. I tried restarting to the OS selection for holding alt, and tried the DVD again, did not work.
I saw a few posts claiming that this didn't work on some models of Mac because of a EFI problem that would not allow booting from a external USB, which is really stupid because it would seems some models can... And MacBook airs can... Can someone please confirm this for me? Has anyone found a resolution?
If not, APPLE PLEASE FIX THIS.

Hi,
Thanks for the reply. Yes the MBP is currently running Tiger, I want to flatten this with a fresh install of Leopard. I can view the install DVD when in Tiger currently.
I haven't tried what you have suggested, but I have seen various posts suggesting this approach. I've also seen several posts explain how to create a partition on an external firewire Harddrive and this seems to have worked for various people.
This would however mean that I didn't really need the external Lacie drive at all, as I've got access to my G5s DVD drive over the network. The more I search on this, the more convinced I am the USB drive was a bad idea.
Once again thank for the response.

My laptop won't boot form external USB DVD drive

Hi, I have HP pavillion dv6748us. My internal dvd drive is not recognized, cannot access and not listed in device manager & window explorer. I need to reboot from the external dvd but don't see the option listed in BIOS. Below is the sequence listed in my BIOS. I have recovery disk and would like to know if and how to add external USB DVD DRIVE into to BIOS.
Your help is greatly appreicated!
(1) ATAPI CD/DVD ROM DRIVE
(2) USB HARD DRIVE
(3) NOTEBOOK HARD DRIVE
(4) USB DISKETTE ON KEY
(5) USB FLOPPY
(6) NETWORK ADAPTOR

Have you tried 2? The BIOS may see the DVD drive as a mass storage device and not distinguish between a hard drive and an optical drive.

Satellite L20-100 can be booted from external USB hard drive?

I recently bought Toshiba Satellite L20-100 and I wonder if:
1. is there any possibility to boot this machine from external usb hard drive?
2. it is possible to attach another internal hard drive?
Supposing that the both answers above are 'no', how can I solve the following problem: I need hdd space, I need to boot 3 separate Wxp Operating Systems onto the same machine (Toshiba Satellite L20-100).

Booting from external USB HD - "No" would be the official, mcrsoft sponsored, answer. However, it is possible. Not easy but it can be done. I've seen it done with my own eyes and there are guides how to do this. Just look for it with search engine. But if you have enough disk space you better do what was suggested here - create 3 partitions and use boot manager.

Booting from internal cd/dvd drive

hallo there, i have a hp d035-dx that cannot boot from cd/dvd drive. please advice. From boot option, there is no boot option of cd/dvd drive
This question was solved.
View Solution.

Hi,
You may need to disable Secure Boot - see the guide on the following link. While in the Boot Options, you may also need to Enable Legacy Devices.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c03736054&tmp_task=solveCategory&cc=us&dlc=en&lc...
Regards,
DP-K
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Microsoft MVP - Windows Experience

Booting from a USB Flash Drive and Optimizing Performance

I know that you can boot Leopard from a USB flash drive, and I have a 16GB flash drive I'm using as a bootup disk on this 2006 MacBook I have that has a broken hard drive (it was recalled, but the recall ended in 2010).
The problem is that it's very slow. I have about 8GB of free space on it, so it can't be the VRAM being too small. The USB speed just stinks. There must be ways to optimize the OS to run off of a slow drive by accessing data as infrequently as possible. What can I do to speed this up? Should I disable hard disk sleeping? Should I use some kind of Mac tuneup/optimization tool's feature?
I plan to get an internal hard drive for it, but I'm stuck with this for a while.

Not all USB2 Flash drives are equal, in fact I bought 2 16 GB USB drives for cheap, as along side of them were even the same brand 16 GB Flash Drives just a different model, for 5 times as much!
Me was thinking how bad could they be? Well, they could be 5 times worse than other USB2 flash drives... LOL on me!
They under extremely rare occasions will Read or Write at 5 MB/s, & very often 1 MB/s...
My Buffalo Flash drives do near USB2's top speed, see some diffs...
http://usbspeed.nirsoft.net/
Optimizing yours will give little benefit.
You could also do a USB2 RAID0 setup if you have enough ports.

Can an iMac Boot from a FireWire DVD Drive?

My superdrive just died and I'd like to know if its functionality can be completely restored with an external FireWire drive, in particular can it be used to boot the Mac?
Thanks!

Hello Tyler,
Yes you can boot from an External Firewire drive.
You may not be able to restore the broken drive though.
Disk Warrior may help some...
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/
Hope that helps
Regards
Ian

My compaq cq62-214nr will not boot from a usb flash drive

I have a Compaq CQ62-214 NR Notebook. When I enter the bios boot options screen with F9 there is a blank space where Boot from USB/Flash Drive should be. If I enter the bios setup and move usb flash drive up to the first option above Notebook hardrive and Internal CD/DVD Rom ,save the changes to the BIOS then Reboot. Enter the boot options screen again the blank line moves up to the first choice slot but still is blank. If I press enter over that black option the computer does not boot from the OS I have install on the usb flash drive it just starts its normal windows boot screen. YES I have upgraded the BIOS to the lates version F.37
Can somone tell me what is wrong.

Try booting into the one time boot menu.
Step 1: As soon as you turn on the computer on the hp invent screen keep tapping F9 key.
Step 2: you will get boot otions such as hard drive, optical drive, USb drive
Step 3: You can hit enter on the usb flash drive. Should boot from the os on your flash drive
*Although I am an HP employee, I am speaking for myself and not for HP.
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Booting from a USB DVD drive

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