Can PB boot from an External Firewire Hard Drive?

Can I set up an external firewire hard drive as an emergency boot drive, in case my internal drive goes south? Anyone have utility software recommendations for setting up boot drive or mirror drive, in addition to OS X's Disk Utility? Thanks.

Photon2:
Yes, you can set up your external firewire HDD as an emergency boot drive.
Here's what you need to do:
1. Your HDD must be formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
2. (Optional) I suggest you partition your HDD so that the first partition is roughly equivalent to the size of your internal HDD. The rest can be partitioned for other uses. (See Dr. Smoke's FAQ Backup and Recovery) For step-by-step for formatting and partitioning please post back).
3. Use SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable clone of your internal HDD to the external firewire HDD/partition.
Please post back with further questions or comments.
Cheers
cornelius

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Can you boot from an external USB hard drive? (Neo2 Platinum)

As I'm tempted to get a 160Gb drive for Linux and AMD64 XP installations. But obviously it needs to beable to boot from it.
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I read a post recently about booting from a usb memory stick - I assume the principal is the same. You need to make the usb drive bootable, in the same way that you would make a cd or a diskette bootable. In the example given about a usb memory stick, they suggested copying the contents of a win98 startup disk onto the memory stick. Then, run 'sys.com' on the drive letter of the usb stick from the startup disk. Then, enable usb legacy support in the bios, and access the boot order to tell it to boot from the usb or legacy, I'm not sure which.
What you're in essence wanting to do is to copy the xpcd to the usb drive, so the format and files, etc., are the same. Then, follow with the usb legacy stuff, etc....

Can I boot from an external Firewire drive?

I have restored my internal system drive (27GB) to a 100GB partition on a 300GB external FW drive (as a backup).
Using System preferences I changed the startup disk to be the clone & rebooted to test.
No start and the only way to get going again was to turn the FW drive off & reboot.
Is it possible to boot from a FW drive?
Should a drive as described be bootable?
Any thoughts will be appreciated.
John

Thank you all for your input.
After some trial & error (& little sleep last night) I have made some progress:
Further research suggested that:
1. there may be a hardware issue with my Ex FW case (it has a Prolific PL-3507 chip)
2. Tiger (10.4.x) behaves differently from Panther (10.3.x) and possibly different versions of Tiger may behave differently
Also I have previously successfully used DU to move my OS from a 30GB to 120GB disk (both internal drives) under 10.3.9. This disk will boot when placed in a ext FW case.
I concluded that under 10.3.9 at least my case was OK & Apple DU was OK when run from the boot volume.
I also checked the clone made using DU under 10.4.3 by taking the HDD out of the FW case & installing it internally in my Mac - it wouldn't boot so DU hadn't made a bootable clone - it was never going to boot internally or externally. Ever.
Next step - SuperDuper! - worked perfectly - backed up & booted no fuss, no worries.
This confirms that the Prolific PL-3507 chip will boot an external FW disk under OS X 10.4.3.
I then referred to Lee Cullens' posts as quoted by Matthew Whiting (with a link above in this topic).
Lee has the answer (at least for my hardware/software configuration). For Apple's DU to produce a bootable clone it cannot be run from the disk which is being cloned (ie 3 volumes are needed
1st to boot from & run DU from
2nd to be cloned (the vloume to be backed up)
3rd to be colned onto - the backup
I tried DU from the boot disk again to "prove" it wouldn't work. While it appeared to clone correctly Permissions were all messed up & after over an hour of "Repairing Permissions" I gave up. The volume wouldn't boot even though system preferences saw it as a bootable volume.
I then ran DU from another volume (the one made using SuperDuper!). After verification (but not repairing permissions as I didn't want to potentially waste another hour!) it booted fine from the ext FW drive. I did however uncheck "Ignore Ownership" after Cmd-I on the volume from the desktop.
I conclude:
My hardware is OK (& probably others who may have similar issues)
Apple DU can make a bootable clone which will work on an ext FW drive PROVIDING 3 volumes are used - boot with DU on, from & to. Suitable for a bootable backup but a bit fiddly ( also free & regularly updated by Apple)
SuperDuper does the same job with less fuss (don't need a CD or 3rd volume + other features). As noted by Matthew basic cloning is free but I think the shareware cost will be worthwhile ($US27.95)
SuperDuper! here: http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
Thanks to all for their input.
I now have an answer that I'm more than happy with.
John

Can't boot from snow leopard bootable hard drive on my new 27 imac

Hey guys
I have just bought a new 27in Imac with all possible upgrades.
I have an old 2.2 MBP running snow leopard. I used carbon copy clone to make a bootable clone.
It will boot from the hard drive on my MBP ( the one I cloned it from) but it will not boot on my Imac.
I can select it from the boot screen ( holding down alt) but after I select it I just get the apple logo and nothing happens.
Can anyone shed some light on this for me? I have looked through tones of forums but can't seem to fine the answer.
Will the new mountain lion not boot snow leopard? If it can boot windows I don't see why it wouldn't boot my clone.
Thanks in advance peeps

I don't think it is fixable. Your new Mac has come installed with Mountain Lion. My understanding, from what I've learned on these boards, is that a Mac cannot boot from an OS earlier than the one that was installed at point of manufacture. I believe it is to do with the firmware that is on later models.
It also means that you cannot install an OS earlier than the one the machine came with (apparently this can be worked around by installing an earlier OS in a Virtual Machine, like some people install Windows on their Macs. This is not something I've done, but a regualr poster on here MichaelLAX, I think, has described how it's possible).
If you're wanting to just erase and start afresh with the MBP surely you can do that with the clone? You don't need the iMac to do that.

Does arch support booting from an external firewire cdrom drive?

as above?

If the mobo provides that function through bios provisions the arch system should boot.
EDIT: There may be issues with udev and mkinitcpio to ensure the boot sequence is not terminated by the udev detection.
Last edited by lilsirecho (2008-05-14 15:18:04)

How do I start up an iMac G4 on an external Firewire hard drive using Tige?

How do I start up using Tiger from an external Firewire hard drive? I have a 1 GHz iMac G4 with 768 MB RAM. The hard drive failed last week. I don't want to buy and install a new hard drive for the iMac G4. I have access to an Intel based iBook and a brand new copy of OS X 10.5 (Tiger) which I can use to install the copy of Tiger on an external Firewire hard drive that I have that's not being used. What are the steps for installing Tiger on the external Firewire hard drive and then using that external drive as the startup disk for the iMac G4?

Hi
Attach the external firewire drive to the iBook, launch Disk Utility and erase the drive use Mac OS Extended as the format type. Insert the Installer Disk, restart the iBook and hold down the 'C' key. Progress through the usual setup assistant prompts until you get to the point where you select the destination disk. You should see the external firewire disk. Select this and carry on with the installation. When the install is done, restart the iBook and verify you can boot from the drive. You can proceed with the Setup Assistant and create the default User Admin account if you want, or you can quit, shut down the iBook and disconnect the drive.
Next attach the drive to your iMac, switch on your iMac. The mac should find for itself the first bootable system it 'senses'. It should boot thereafter. You could forego this and simply attach the drive, boot the iMac and hold down the alt key. This should bring up startup disk manager which should show any or all valid bootable systems. Select the one you want and click the right hand arrow.
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Can I boot from an external drive with a "Virtual CD"

I just purchased a Hitachi LifeStudio external hard drive for use as my Time Machine backup. When I plugged it in to my MacBook running 10.6.4, I realized that it had one of those "Virtual CDs" that contained the manufacturers crapware, similar to Western Digital's MyWare or whatever its called. It shows up in disk utility as an actual separate disk and not just another partition that can be wiped.
I reformatted the drive using GUID and and created 3 HFS+ Journaled partitions. One was going to be for the 10.6 installer, one for the 10.6 boot, and one for my time machine backup. I restored a 10.6 install dvd disk image I created using disk utility to the 10.6 installer partition (with erase destination checked) then option booted my mac and the partitions did not show up. The only thing I could see was my internal hard drive.
I have done this many times before and it has always worked so Im trying to figure out what Im doing wrong. The only thing I can think of is that the "Virtual CD" that Hitachi put on this external drive is stopping the Mac from seeing the bootable partitions I created. I even went into system preferences>startup disk and blessed the 10.6 install partition. That didn't work either, the computer just booted to my internal drive.
So my questions are. Is it because of this "Virtual CD" that I can't boot from my external drive? If so, is there a way around it? I already searched their web site and emailed their tech support asking for a firmware update to remove the virtual cd.
Thanks in advance.

Yes, it's a known issue. You've already referred to the issue with WD systems. WD has a long list of products that are either not compatible with Macs or won't boot a Mac.
There are practically no problems with bare drives, but once installed in an enclosure there is no guarantee that the package will function as a bootable device. This is especially the case if the manufacturer uses some sort of "virtual" scheme intended for using the device as a sort of one button backup device.
External drives don't have to specifically say anything about being Mac bootable or compatible. It's up to the consumer to verify compatibility and usability.

Itunes and all my movies have disappeared,i can no longer add to library from my external hdd which ive always used and can only add from the laptops own hard drive,any ideas what the issue could be?

ive recently updated, itunes and all my movies have disappeared,i can no longer add to library from my external hdd which ive always used and can only add from the laptops own hard drive,any ideas what the issue could be?if i transfer the movies from the external to the laptop they will add to the library without any problem so theres no issue with the laptop but when i go to add file in itunes i can path to the external but as soon as i select the file nothing happens, just goes back to itunes

This happens if the file is no longer where iTunes expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, or that the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter. It is also possible that iTunes has changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout,or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to get info, then cancel when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the summary tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drive(s). Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions.
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External Firewire Hard Drive is not recognized

Hello
I have a LaCie External Firewire Hard Drive (like this one (http://www.lacie.com/us/support/support_manifest.htm?id=10105). Since it uses a fireware 400 cable, I bought a FireWire 800-400 adapter, the one from moshi that is sold in the mac store.
I have tried connecting it to both ports in the external harddrive, connecting and disconnecting and still is not recognized. Any idea and suggestions?
I already tried in another computer, with windows xp, and the hard drive works.
Thanks.

Hi, oops, I have more than 1 mac & I apologize for assuming you are a multiple mac owner..
You could visit your local Apple Store or Local Apple Approved Service Agent.
You could try connecting via USB if your external HD has the capability, it could also be a bad cable.
You can check the Finder -> Preferences & the Show These Items..
You can reboot with the Ext HD connected & see if it shows up on your d/top...L

Installing Mac OS X on an external firewire hard drive.

No matter what I try, I cannot get my Mac mini to boot from the SuperDrive, in order to install the Mac OS X operating system onto my external firewire hard drive...
The Mac mini always recognises the external firewire HD, each time the system boots-up which is good, however it also boots-up from the internal HD, automatically.
Any suggestions ?
I have also noticed that my external firewire HD does not appear as an option as a Startup Disk, under System Preferences...
Regards,
Howard Pew.

I have used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the Mini's internal HD to the firewire external HD, and now it appers as a Startup Drive under System Preferences...
I have also noticed that I must first turn-on the ext. firewire HD and then after a few seconds turn-on the Mini.
And, yes, I was using the original DVD-ROM System Install Disk that came with the Mini, when I was trying to install Mac OS X onto the ext. firewire HD...
Now, I still cannot get my Mac Mini to boot from the ext. firewire HD, even with a clone copy of the internal HD. I keep selecting it as my Startup Disk under System Preferences and even lock-it, but this does not seem to work.
Now, I use the 'Alt' key (for Windows PC keyboards) which is the 'Option' key for Mac keyboards, when the Mini is booting up. This gives me a choice as to which HD I want to boot from... However, I cannot seem to change this from the default internal HD. It gives me a large arrow to use, in order to change the HD, but I cannot seem to use this large arrow from the keyboard. And the mouse just stays in the top left-hand corner of the screen. I know, if the mouse curser were free, I would be able to change the large arrow and boot from the ext. firewire HD...
Any suggestions ?
Regards,
Howard Pew.

Which external firewire hard drive for protools and imac?

hello group,
i see many posts about external firewire hard drive issues. i would like to purchase a drive of 7200rpm or faster, 200gb or larger for recording with protools into an imac intel duo 2.0. hopefully theres a brand that i can buy that will just work out of the box. i have no mac troubleshooting skills and wish to avoid any compatability complications. is there a general consensus on a no brainer drive for mac newbies? thanks for any advice.
jeff

I highly recommend that Mercury Elite Pro drives from OWC as well. They are very stable and reliable due to their use of the Oxford 911 chipset and not the more common - and more problematic - Prolific chipset. I also use SuperDuper to make fully bootable clones of my internal drive for backing up everything.
If their history for me and others continues with you, there should be absolutely no troubles for you using an OWC drive and Protools.

Install XP on External FireWire Hard Drive

Can someone help me install Windows XP onto an External, FireWire, Hard Drive? I can format and partition the drive with the XP CD, but it won't install XP onto the drive.
It says something about access rights and BIOS or CMOS. I don't think Macs have either a BIOS or a CMOS. I've tried correcting disk permissions with Disk Utility, but it wouldn't do it. It probably doesn't have access.
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Hi Megabyte,
sad to say but Windows can not be installed to an external Firewire Harddrive.
And this is not a OSX BootCamp issue, but 'designed' by Microsoft to not be doable.
Only way I know is with an USB connected external harddisk and described here: http://tubeshards.wordpress.com/2006/12/05/install-windows-to-a-macintosh-usb-dr ive/
regards
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How would I create a bootable duplicate OS on my external Firewire Hard Drive? Allowing me to bring my External Hard Drive to my friends home and booting to it and showing them what I have worked on rather than bringin my entire computer.

Figured it out!

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I want to use an external firewire hard drive to save my iMovie files on while I work on them. Is there any where I can go to congfigure, or should it just work? I've been trying it, and iMovie will sometimes crash. Is there a way around this?
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From the SoftRAID manual:
Fire hubs and disk drives. FireWire hubs are notorious for introducing errors and instability onto the bus.
Make sure that all of your consumer electronic devices (iSight, cameras, scanners) are connected to a separate FW bus. These devices are not built to the same standards as storage devices and known for introducing errors onto a FW bus.
Cables. While most cables work fine with a single device, many cables will introduce errors when 2 or more disks are connected to the bus.
http://www.softraid.com
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I just bought a camera, and curious myself to see if I can take 10 minute clips and use iMovie/iDVD so that it will auto-play. I may end up buying Pogue's "iMovie Missing Manual" or something.
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EMac and FCE using an external firewire hard drive as a Scratch Disk

I am about to purchase a new hard drive for use with FCE as a scratch disc.
I am looking for people who are "actually" using an external firewire hard drive as a scratch disc with FCE on an eMac.
I am interested in the following info.
1. What Make, Model, size HD are you using?
2. What rpm speed and cache size?
3. Any problems? Crashed HD's? Working good?
4. Do you have any other firewire devices plugged into your eMac?
I blew up 3 eMacs last year. Apple could not figure it out or anyone else.
I was using a Lacie P3 250/8mb firewire drive as a scratch disc.
Thanks in advance.
eMac 1.25ghz/1gb RAM/160gb HD/Superdrive Mac OS X (10.3.9)

1. What Make, Model, size HD are you using?
I have two LaCie Porsche drives, one 160 GB and another 250 GB (more like 159 GB and 233 GB in actuality).
2. What rpm speed and cache size?
They're both 5400 RPM if memory serves me. The 160 drive has 2 MB cache and the 250 has 8 MB cache.
3. Any problems? Crashed HD's? Working good?
The 160 GB drive caused me some problems, but I'm chalking most of that up to a bad FireWire cable. LaCie replaced the cable for free, and I haven't had any significant problems.
4. Do you have any other firewire devices plugged into your eMac?
Since I've got a 15" PowerBook, I'm limited to 1 Firewire bus, so the two drives, a LaCie DVD burner, and my Sony Handicam are all daisy-chained together. Having the Handicam on the bus tends to slow things down, but I can certainly capture to the drives with no problems. If I'm doing a lot of editing, though, I'll unplug the camera to speed up the bus.
I use the 160 GB drive primarily for backup, storing finished projects, and storing stock footage. The 250 GB drive is used solely for video capture and render.
The only thing I might caution you with is that the LaCie Porsche drives are rather picky about how they get turned on and plugged into the FireWire bus. You need to plug the power in, turn them on, and THEN plug in FireWire -- it won't work if you have FireWire plugged in when you turn them on. It's not a big issue, as long as you're aware of it. (It could be that my PowerBook is a little wonky, too.)

Can PB boot from an External Firewire Hard Drive?

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