Can MBP (with fw800) boot from external FW drive?

Does MBP allow you to boot from an external fw800 drive like the Powerbook did?
I am still using PB, and I used the CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner/SuperDuper etc) to clone my OS to an external fw800 drive. Matter of fact, as I am typing now I am running the OS from the fw800 drive. I need this because if my laptop's OS encounters problem I can boot up the comp.
Does the C2D processor work with CCC? I also notice apart from the PowerPC is that the Intel lets you boot into either OSX/XP or Vista via Bootcamp.
So, if it's possible to boot from an external drive, how does it work out? Because on the PowerBook, you hold option key to select either your main drive or external drive to boot to. But on the Intel, if you have bootcamp installed with OSX/Vista, would it show up 4 directories like this to let you boot to either one of these?
OSX (MBP HD) / Vista (MBP HD) / OSX (ext HD) / Vista (ext HD)
Thanks

Apple very plainly states that an Intel Mac can't boot a disk formatted on a PowerPC Mac, and vice versa. Each uses a different native partition table. Yet, each can read data stored on the other.
If you initialize the FireWire disk on an Intel Mac and use GPT as the partition type, Intel Macs can boot from it.
If you initialize the drive on a PowerPC machine, or you elect to use APM (Apple Partition Map) on an Intel Mac, then the drive will boot a PowerPC machine.
Nate

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Ibook g3 M2453 boot from external DVD drive

Hi, I'm Simon from Germany.
I have an iBook M2453 Mac OS X and a lot of dvds.
But the iBook has no DVD drive. So I bought an external DVD drive. But no matter what I do during boot (press the C key or alt)
I can not boot from external DVD drive.
Please help me
Thank you.
Simon.
PS: I have translated the text using Google translate

Hi Simon,
the iBook is able to boot from USB, but this is not expected behaviour and not supported by Apple.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA20554
There are some external enclosures that do the trick.
But only when you press ALT after Power on. (Select a startup volume via the Startup Manager)
External enclosures with Prolific PL-3507 chipset (Firewire/USB Combo)
You will find them on Ebay Germany
I have a Delock IDE>USB 2.0 enclosure for 2,5" HDs
http://www.delock.com/produkte/gruppen/Geh%C3%A4use/Delock_25_external_enclosure _USB20_42365.html?setLanguage=EN
that works also.
Hallo Simon,
das läuft nur mit einigen wenigen externen Gehäusen. Such auf Ebay nach "PL-3507"
und nimm eins mit Firewire und USB Anschlüssen.
Ein Festplattengehäuse von Delock für 2,5" Festplatten ging auch ( Link oben)
Ein Boot ist nur möglich wenn du die ALT Taste nach dem Einschalten drückst und dann über den Startup manager dein Boot volume auswählst.

Booting from external hard drive on intel-based MacBook Pro

Good day everyone. I know similar questions were raised in this community, but I still have some questions.
I have MacBook Pro(late 2011) with OS X 10.7.5 and external hard drive with Ubuntu 13.04, from wich i can boot succefully on my PC. But MacBook Pro will not boot from my external drive, no matter which key/combination i use during restart.
After googling I found some answers to my initial question, how to boot from external hard drive
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1852633?start=0&tstart=0
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/faq/macbook-pro-boot-from-exte rnal-firewire-or-usb-drive.html
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1948
As I understand I need to format my external hard drive into GUID partition type and this will be enough to be able to boot from it on my mac?
With this new partition type, will I be able to install ubuntu again on my external drive?
Does GUID partition type supports NTFS, ext4 and FAT32, linux swap?(I use ntfs for big files, ext4 as partition for ubuntu and fat32, because i use windows, linux and osx)
Will I be able to boot from my pc from my external drive with this new partition type?
What are downsides, if any, to GPT?
here is info on my e-drive

LowLuster wrote:
The only OS that will boot from an external drive is Mac OS X or maybe Linux. For OS X to be installed on any drive it need to be formatted Mac OS Extended and have GUID partition table.
As for Linux I'm not that familiar with it but again for a Mac to boot it need an EFI partition on the drive and I don't think that is possible with NTFS or FAT32 let alone the native Linux format.
Went to wiki to learn more on efi but found artice on uefi.
Operating system loaders are a class of the UEFI applications. As such, they are stored as files on a file system that can be accessed by the firmware, called EFI System partition (ESP). Supported file systems include FAT32, FAT16 and FAT12, and supported partition table scheme is GPT only. UEFI does not rely on a boot sector, although ESP provides space for it as part of the backwards compatibility.[26]
Here is FAQ on official uefi website.
Can UEFI Secure Boot be adopted and implemented by a variety of operating systems?
UEFI specifications are platform-independent, supporting multiple platforms and architectures. In addition, UEFI specifications are designed to promote cross-functionality, as well as to support broad adoption across multiple operating systems, including Windows as well as Linux-based operating systems. The specifications are robust and can potentially complement—or even advance—other distributions, such as Linux-based distributions.
And here is wiki article on GPT expaining OS support.
It is obvious both uefi and GPT are ok with Linux and file systems such as FAT32, ext4 and NTFS.
I guess there is no much difference(or is that the same thing?) between uefi and efi used in Macs.
In your answer to Stark Industries you said that mac can boot linux from external hard drive, well this is not the info i got of official website and it is still my question, because your answer is very inconclusive and your info is partially incorrect

How can I move my project from external hard drive to my macbook pro?

How can I move my project from external hard drive to my macbook pro? every time I try to do some editing, the sequence is very slow, thanks in advance

Try here...
Setting-up a new Mac from an old one, its backups, or a PC

Boot from external Firewire Drive-cannot repair or optimize internal drive.

Hi all
Connected my new 300 GB Seagate External Firewire Hard Drive today.
Installed Tiger from DVD. Updated to 10.4.3.
Installed Tech Tool Pro 4. Updated to 4.1.1.
Booted from External Firewire Drive.
Disk Utility cannot Verify or Repair internal drive. Does not say or do anything.
Tech Tool Pro cannot repair volume or optimize. Says, "Cannot Unmount Volume."
Is there a fix for this?
Thank you for the help!
Jeff
eMac 800 nVidia. Mac OS X (10.4.3) 160 GB Internal HD. Pioneer Superdrive. 1 GB RAM.

Hi
I did name the new external completely different from the internal.
After booting from the external Firewire Hard Drive, I tried running Disk Utility and Tech Tool Pro from both drives. No matter which drive I run the Utilities from the same things happen every time...
Nothing happens when trying to use Disk Utility to Verify Volume on internal eMac Drive.
Tech Tool Pro says, "Cannot unmount volume" when trying to check Volume or Optimize internal drive.

Core i7 mbp will not boot from external disk

One upon a time, I tried to boot my new:
Model Name:    MacBook Pro
Model Identifier:    MacBookPro8,1
Processor Name:    Intel Core i7
Processor Speed:    2.7 GHz
Number of Processors:    1
Total Number of Cores:    2
L2 Cache (per Core):    256 KB
L3 Cache:    4 MB
Memory:    4 GB
Boot ROM Version:    MBP81.0047.B0E
from a bootable Carbon Copy Cloner backup on my external FW800 drive. (This, after I used Migration assistant to move the user over from My MacBookPro 5,1 core 2 duo machine.)
It didn't like it, booting from the CCC clone, that is. There were problems with the boot of the new machine from that external disk and then problems with the boot from the internal disk. I repaired disk permisssions and all seemed to be well booting from the internal disk for several months until I tried to boot from my SL 10.6 2Z691-6431-A CPU Drop-in DVD upgrade included with the initial purchase. That didn't work. I got the grey "restart your computer by holding down the power button" screen with a bunch of words and numbers in the background. This also happened with the grey intsall disks that shipped with the machine with 10.5.7 on them.
Following this, the turning gear times are erratic, varying from 11 to 40 turns on boot up with an odd flicker happening for a fraction of a second during the turning gear screen. From time to time I'll get some beach balling while the login is taking place and all of the icons are loading in. After that, the machine functions fairly normally.
I know there's a problem though and I'm looking to resolve it with any advice the community can offer.
I have used DiskWarrior in the past but not for this machine which has not been used with this machine since it's incompatible. I also have a full timecapsule backup. I also have a partition on an external drive with OS 10.6 on it. Haven't tried to boot from it because I'm scared it'll mess things up worse.

I'm trying to boot my core i7 from any external disk without success getting only the grey restart screen. The machine will neither boot from the 10.6 upgrade disk, nor the external firewire disk.
I'm not sure, but it seems that you're suggesting that I rebuild the OS as though it were a brand new machine without any of my s/w or data, and I cannot conceive of such a monumental task. If you mean that I should reinstall the OS, that would be fine, but I can't boot from a DVD, which is what prompted this query to begin with.
I would like to resolve the external disk boot failure.

All users GONE except for "Other"...and CANNOT boot from External DVD drive

I booted the iMac (Intel...the last one with the White Bezel) tonight, and all of my users were GONE except for "Other." The internal Superdrive has had a disc jammed in it for months, so instead I have an OWC external USB/FW400/FW800 DVD drive. Snow Leaopard.
I need to boot from the SL install disc, but that must go into the external drive...which, as it's been since I upgraded to SL, the Mac sometimes sees and sometimes doesn't. Right now it can't see it. Which leaves me a big pile of crap, doesn't it?
So, what to do? I can't boot the internal drive because it's jammed with a DVD (or I spend $300 to replace what should be a $20 optical drive in it), I can't boot the external DVD drive because the iMac w/Snow Lepeord can't see it, and, meanwhile, all of my photos, etc., are on my Time Machine backup drive...which, as long as I can't do any of the above, just sits there...useless.
Can you tell I'm a bit frustrated with this?
I've reset the PRAM. I've rebooted. I've held down all sorts of combinations of keys. I've tried every single interface type on the external drive and the same thing - the drive can't be seen by the computer.
Has the internal hard drive failed? Nope. I'm tying this using the Firefox browser that's running on my Windows XP installation via Boot Camp on the internal hard drive.

Thanks, but no luck so far.
I have an old iMac G3 downstairs, and I connected it to the machine via Firewire. I could see the disk on the 24" iMac, its folders, etc. I wanted to see if I could install OS X via Target Disk Mode from the old machine to the new one, but it's a PowerPC machine and you can't do that. Maybe you can't do that from ANY iMac...I'm not that experienced.
Now the iMac isn't booting at all to Windows via Boot Camp - it's been booting for 45 minutes now with the "WinXP" logo, but nothing. I'm about to throw it in the car and haul it over to my parents, who have both a Powerbook and a 27" iMac. Maybe it'll work there. Who knows.
Other ideas...replace the internal hard drive (cheap)...if that doesn't work, I'll just sell the thing. I'm not going to sink $300 into the thing when I can get a new machine for around $600-$700. I may go to a Windows7 machine on the desktop and a Powerbook...maybe even an iPad.
I really want to love this iMac. It's my first (well, I did have the G3, but that was just to play with) Mac. It's given me a ton of problems since I bought it new. It's always been a "stock" machine - nothing weird done to it. I was hit with an iMovie update once, and that broke iMovie. Even the new iLife 2009 didn't fix it. Then, the internal optical disk drive failed. I couldn't believe that Apple used a proprietary optical drive rather than a stock Pioneer model. Price for the drive alone? $200.
I installed Snow Leopard 2 months ago, and that completely broke my ability to use external optical drives. Sometimes they work...most times they don't. This is an ongoing problem that many people are having (check the forums)...but no fix. Where does that leave me? With a useless computer.
So, I've boiled it down to this: I love the Mac software. I hate the hardware. Sure, it's pretty, but if something goes wrong, get ready to pay. I hate that Apple knows about problems, yet does nothing to address them, like the problem with external optical drives and Snow Leopard.
I bought the Mac because I was sick of Microsoft not being able to simply produce an OS full of security holes. Often times I read people bashing supposed "driver ****" with Windows, but look at what users of Windows machine are demanding of Microsoft - "please make my software compatible with the trillions of combinations of hardware that can run the os...all the way back to stuff that was created in the mid 1990s." Meanwhile, from my experience, Apple can't get their software to work with their own proprietary, supposedly vertically-controlled hardware.
Windows7 is a not bad OS. It's got it's faults, of course. But, if my optical drive failed in a Windows box, I'd have it replaced in 10 minutes...with a bluray drive...that can write...for under $100.
I use my computer for pictures, etc. In fact, we were ready to send off to iPhoto for our yearly photo books. That's not going to happen, as the photos are forever trapped on my Time Machine backup drive (lesson learned: dump photos to a generic format...fat32 works...just in case you decide to switch from Mac to Win7). iLife is great. MS Office is great, too, on the Mac. I love the little things the Mac does right.
After years of screwing around with my Windows box, I wanted a computer that acted like a consumer electronic device. That's not what I've gotten.
Ugh, so now do I buy a Mac Mini for $700, a new iMac for $1,400, or a Macbook Pro and a mac mini?
...or...do I continue to work within this silly Ubuntu Linux world?
Whatever the answer, I wish I didn't have to ask the question now.

Why won't my iMac 27" boot from external hard drive?

I have a new 27in Intel i5 dual core 3.6GHz iMac. It works wonderfully.
My question is this. I have a Pleides Ice Cube external hard drive with a USB 2.0/Firewire enclosure with a 500GB hard drive. I used diskutility to format the hard drive as a GUID Partition Table. I then used SuperDuper to clone the iMac OS 10.6.7 and Apps over to it.
I can select the external drive in System Preferences/Startup Disk to boot from, but when booting the iMac gets as far as the white screen then just stops loading.
I have tried both the USB connection and the Firewire connection (with a Firewire 800 to 400 cable).
I have run Disk Utility and repaired the disk and the preferences.
I have used Disk Warrior to rebuild the directory as well, but the iMac will not boot from the drive.
It does boot from the original DVD's and its own hard drive.
My old 24" iMac had no trouble booting from this hard drive or any of the others I have collected over the years, so I am reluctant to think it is the external drive. It is something to do with this particular processor Snow Leopard and external drives.

It sounds like something in the SuperDuper clone might not have copied well. To get the full answer on that I would check with Apple or SuperDuper to see if they support each other.
As a quick test, if you restart and immediately press and hold "option" on your keyboard do you see your external HD as an option to boot from? If so, click it and see if the boot runs any differently, but if you don't see it at all that could show that the problem is more deep rooted.
Personally, if looking in to either of those didn't give me any other info to go on, I would reformat and start the clone again. BTW, do you know for sure GUID Partition is the format you'd want to do this on? Generally macs use "Mac OS Extended" and some external HDs can use "FAT32" (if you want them to work well with Windows)
Hope that gives a little direction
Alex

Problem booting from external DVD drive on Lenovo S10e

Hi,
I recently purchased a new Lenovo S10e ideapad, a few weeks prior to that I purchased an external DVD rewriter drive manufactured by LG, the drive works perfectly on every computer I try with the exception of the Lenovo ideapad S10e.
The thing is that the drive is being recognized and installed by the Windows XP Home Edition the S10e came with but when I try to boot a bootable CD using then drive on the S10e ideapad I almost alwasy fail to do so.
I set the S10e BIOS to have the USB CDROM as first boot device, in addition I used the F12 key to use the boot menu to choose the boot device, in 9 out 0f 10 atempts my external drive will not show in the boot menu and when choosing the enter setup option I see that the BIOS do not list it as the USB CDROM, instead it says "USB CDROM:" rather than have the drive name after it.
In the 1 time out of 10 it does work the BIOS seem to be identifying the drive and it shows in the boot menu, however I cannot work with it for a more than 1 minute without it stopped being recognized again.
The problem seems very strange to me as the drive works under the windows operating system and do not have any problem whatsoever on other computers, I have tested the external drive on my PC, another Mini Laptop from LG and a GIGABYTE Laptop (Normal one), all of which had no problems recognizing the external drive and booting from it.
I will really appreciate if I can get some help with the problem.
Thanks.

I've had a similar issue with X61 and the external DVD drive from Lenovo.
In my case, it was the power issue. On the back of the drive, there is a small table says that the drive needs a 3.0A 5V power input. One USB 2.0 port can only provide 0.5A. I don't know if the drive has any special, low power mode, but I suspect that even if it has, 0.5A is still not enough to fully power it. I've checked the current with the multimeter, and at peak times, the drive draws 550mA. Even then, it makes a stuttering sound for a few seconds, before finally spinning the DVD disk. I've also noticed that the DVD works most of the times when it's connected to the left USB port. That may be because of how the laptop's internal power circuicity is laid out (+separate USB host controller for each 'side' of the laptop). Another thing that seems to help is to disable all 5V driven devices that the laptop uses: the wifi card, bluetooth, any additional devices connected to the USB bus / to the ethernet port / SD card port (I'm not actually sure which of the devices are 5V and which are 3.3V, but the best option is to disable all of them), maybe even remove the battery (if it's charging). Finally, the DVD drive works better if the laptop was turned on and runnig for some time, rather than it being turned on "a minute before". Also, in the BIOS, there is a setting that changes the speed of the DVD drive, but switching it to "low" didn't seem to affect the external drive (at least not before Windows boots up).

G5 won't boot from external hard drive

I have installed Leopard on my external hard drive, but have not gone through the 'setup'. I want to boot my G5 from the hd now, but when I restart holding down the option key, the internal hard drive is the only option that appears. When I do boot from the internal hd, the external hd is recognised perfectly and I can see all the files and everything - I just can't seem to boot from it. The newer iMac I used to install Leopard on the external hd will boot from it, but the G5 refuses to recognise it in the boot options.
Any help much appreciated.

No. If you boot an installer disc on an Intel Mac it will only install an Intel version of OS X. You would need to boot the installer disc on the G5 then install OS X onto your external drive. However, if you do that you will not be able to boot the Intel Mac with the external drive. The only solution to using one external drive on both computers is to partition the drive. Install OS X on one partition using the G5, and install OS X on the other partition using the Intel Mac.

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 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.

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,

Noise when booting from external firewire drive

When booting from a Maxtor drive with OS10.3.9 to the iMac G5 with Tiger the fan makes a lot of noise. Why?
When I reboot into Tiger the fan is normal.
Reasons?
Thanks

The fans are controlled by code in the OS you boot from. It sounds like the OS you have on your external Maxtor is older then your iMac G5. As a results it may not have the needed fan control code. When that occurs, the Firmware in the iMac, sets the fans to a high speed to ensure your computer will not overheat.
Tom N.

Can't boot from external hard drive with Snow Leopard

I bought a new Macbook Air with Lion. I have my old Snow Leopard installation cloned onto an external hard drive, and I want to boot from it. I can choose my external hard drive during boot, it shows the Apple logo, but after that the screen goes black and nothing happens. Is there a way to fix this?

Can't be done. Snow Leopard does not contain necessary drivers and perhaps other items required for OS X on the 2011 MBA. In fact, the version of Lion on the App store won't install on the 2011 MBA.
This is totally normal in Apple's world. A new version of MAC hardware that comes with a new version of OS X installed usually will not operate correctly with previous versions of OS X.

Can MBP (with fw800) boot from external FW drive?

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