Cannot install Snow Leopard onto external drive

I'm attempting to install Snow Leopard on a second drive, an external bare drive in an Icy Dock enclosure connected to a MacPro (running 10.6.6) via serial port. Apple Disc Utility confirms that the external drive (a Seagate 325gb) has a partition map scheme GUID Partition Table. SMART Status is not supported. Connection Bus reads as SCSI but it's connected with a serial cable.
I'm able to perform the first part of the install by selecting the external drive but when I have to restart and complete the install from the original Snow Leopard disc (10.6), the external drive no longer shows up. I've tried several times and have restarted the Icy Dock external drive enclosure.
Any ideas? Thank you.

Not necessarily. Use a backup utility so that you can deselect all the data from within your Home folder as well as third-party applications in order to create a bootable disk but without some of the excess. Any of the following should be suitable:
Backup Software Recommendations
Carbon Copy Cloner
Data Backup
Deja Vu
Silver Keeper
MimMac
Retrospect
Super Flexible File Synchronizer
SuperDuper!
Synchronize Pro! X
Synk Pro
Synk Standard
Tri-Backup
Others may be found at VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
Message was edited by: Kappy

Similar Messages

How to install Snow Leopard onto external hard drive.

I'm currently running on 10.5.8, and I just bought the Snow Leopard installation disc to update to 10.6.3.
My mac has been running on an external hard drive for about a year. The internal just stopped working.
I want to install Snow Leopard onto my external hard drive, but all of my files are on there, and I read that if I do the install, all of the data will be erased.
If I used time machine to back up the files before I do the install, are they at risk of being erased, since they will be back-uped on the external?
This is probably super obvious, but I want to be very careful with this.
Any help is very much appreciated!
^__^

1. The data won't be erased unless a problem occurs.
2. The Time Machine backup should be on a different drive, as drives can fail.
(92634)

Can't Install Snow Leopard on external drive

Hey Mac Addicts,
I'm trying to install Snow Leopard on an external drive (Lacie Triple Rugged, FW800 USB3.0) but keep on getting "Installation failed, can't copy the support files.
My drive is partioned in to 5x100GB partitions, GUID partition scheme. I boot from my installation disk, choose my partition and hit install. The DVD spins and spins and eventually give me a failure. I've tried not installing the custom options (Quicktime 7, Rosetta and have even unchecked X11) but still get the same.
The MacBook Pro I'm trying this from is running 10.6.8 and previous successful attempts at doing this were from 10.6.4, I'm thinking this is the issue, but would rather not have to clean install my machine and try again.
If anybody has any idea's that'll be marvellous, as I am a little confused and lost, especially as I've done this before.
All the best and thanks in advance.
BigMik

Two things,
1: Use FIrewire
2: Use Disk Utility to first Erase with Security Option Zero All Data, the entire drive, then setup the partitions
3: If it doesn't work, then increase the size of the 10.6 parittion or reducing the partitions until it works.
4: Also do all this from the Disk Utility on the internal drive, then try again from the 10.6 install disk. Apple might have pulled something.
Also you can clone your present OS X 10.6 partition using the donationware Carbon Copy Cloner, however the external partition needs to be large enough for all the contents (recommended)
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16276201#16276201

Install Snow Leopard on External FW Drive

Snow Leopard will only install on a GUID partition. I usually have two or three separate volumes on my external drive. If I partition my drive prior to Snow Leopard installation, the scheme is Apple partition map and I cannot install Snow Leopard on any volume. So I assume in order to do an install of Leopard, I must install to a single GUID partition because it seems there is no option to make any of the volumes a GUID partition. Am I correct? On this particular drive, I wanted to have a bootable clone
of my MacBook Pro HD, a bootable disk image of my Snow Leopard Install Disk, and a third scratch volume for temporary video storage. What would be my strategy be to accomplish this?

Tom Dignam wrote:
Snow Leopard will only install on a GUID partition. I usually have two or three separate volumes on my external drive. If I partition my drive prior to Snow Leopard installation, the scheme is Apple partition map and I cannot install Snow Leopard on any volume. So I assume in order to do an install of Leopard, I must install to a single GUID partition because it seems there is no option to make any of the volumes a GUID partition. Am I correct?
no you can have any number of volumes on a GUID partitioned drive.
select the whole drive (model, not name) in disk utility. click on the partition tab. set the number of partitions to 3 (or whatever), click on options and select GUID. set the formats for each partition, adjust the relative sizes and hit "apply".
On this particular drive, I wanted to have a bootable clone
of my MacBook Pro HD, a bootable disk image of my Snow Leopard Install Disk, and a third scratch volume for temporary video storage. What would be my strategy be to accomplish this?
this will work just fine once you reformat the drive as above.

Cannot install Snow Leopard on a new HD in MacBook

I have an older white MacBook that I want to install Snow Leopard onto again. I swapped the existing harddrive back to the original one I received from Apple when the MacBook was purchased. Before putting the hd into the MacBook I made sure to partition and format with Mac Journaled.
During startup I put the Snow Leopard disc and press C to boot from disc. Slowly but eventually, the Snow Leopard process begins. My MacBook cannot seem to detect the HD that is in the machine... When I run Disk Utility, it does not populate but the DVD drive with the Snow Leopard disc is found.
Any suggestions?

What you are saying boils down to the MacBook is not recognizing the HD now installed in it. (Regardless of the formatting, Disk Utility should at least list the drive if it is communicating with the MB's hardware.)
Open the MB & make sure the HD is installed correctly, if necessary by removing it & reseating it, making sure connectors are fully mated, nothing is interfering with its fit into the space for it, etc. Close everything up & restart it, listening for any sounds that indicate the HD is spinning up. If not, it may have been damaged. You can also run the Apple Hardware Test from your original grey system disc set (see the label of the disc for instructions about how to do that if necessary) & see if it detects any hardware problems. If so, make a note of the error code & report that.

Cannot install snow leopard. Keep getting"os product manager domain error-100"

Cannot install snow leopard. Keep getting"os product manager domain error-100"

Just to double check,
1: you are hold c or option/alt key booted from the 10.6 disk that came with your machine
2: you are in Disk Utility and you have selected the drive makers name and disk size on the left
3: you attempt to click Partition tab, click on the big box, select 1 partition, select option: GUID and format OS X exteneded Journaled and it reports "can't unmount disk"
4: you do have no other drives connected to the machine
If that's all true, then you need to quit Disk Utility and use Terminal and try to force unmount the disk
http://macosx.com/forums/mac-os-x-system-mac-software/309784-official-mac-os-x-1 0-6-snow-leopard-thread-faq-33.html
Once the drive is unmounted, then hopefully you should be able to format it in Disk Utility

Why can't brand new MacBookPro9,1 (OEM Mountain-Lion) boot from Snow Leopard on external drive, or internal partition?

Why can't brand new MacBookPro9,1 (OEM Mountain-Lion) boot from Snow Leopard on external drive, or internal partition?
Is this because of hardware changes? Or firmware changes? Or is it just and Apple Inc. administrative fiat?

@Steve Holton: Sorry Steve, but you're wrong about that one . I'm using 10.8 (purchased and downloaded) on the internal HD of this MBP8,3 (2.2 GHz, 17"), and I am also able to boot into 10.7.4 and 10.6.8 from external FW800 partitions.
However, I DO have problems with my MBP9,1. It came with 10.7.4 installed and ran fine. Then I purchased and installed 10.8. It ran fine but could no longer boot from 10.7.4 on an external partition. I then reinstalled 10.7.4 on the internal HD and discovered that it is still unable to boot (even 10.7.4) from an external FW800 partition.
One of Apple's Senior Support Advisors has done some remote troubleshooting but the case is still open and unresolved. An earlier Apple Support case suggested that when, I installed the downloaded copy of 10.8, there had been a "firmware update" (behind the scenes) that is now causing the problems with booting from my external partition(s). This apparently is "a bug": it is not what is supposed to happen.
So - I believe - "the problem" really has nothing to do with hardware capability. It is strictly about Apple's strategy for "managing its future customer base". If you don't like it - use something else - I am seriously considering Ubuntu as an alternative.
If there's a hidden caveat in all this it's probably "Read Appple's Licence Agreement VERY Carefully".

Hi I am trying to install snow leopard, Hi I am trying to install snow leopard onto my iMac g5 currently, Hi I am trying to install snow leopard onto my iMac g5 currently running 10.3.9. I open disk ,click install- nothing happens. Any ideas? Thanks Dan

Hi I am trying to install snow leopard onto my iMac g5 currently running 10.3.9. I open disk ,click install- nothing happens. Any ideas? Thanks Dan

Snow Leopard requires an Intel-based Mac, so as Niel indicated your iMac G5 cannot run it. The last version of Mac OS X your iMac G5 can run is Mac OS X 10.5.8.
Regards.

Installing Snow Leopard onto early 2011 MBP SSD

I want to install a Crucial M500 480GB into my early 2011 MacBook Pro. First, two questions:
Performance and speed-wise, which OS should I install? Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks?
Say I decide to install Snow Leopard onto the SSD (fresh install). How would I do that? Given that:
my model will not boot up from the retail Snow Leopard disk (I had to clone a drive from an early 2008 Mac Pro containing 10.6.8 to my MBP's drive)
the early 2008 Mac Pro only has 3.5" bays and SATA II connectors (the SSD I want is SATA III)
What I have in mind is this (feel free to improve/correct if anything is wrong or could be done better):
Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my current MBP HD (which includes a Bootcamp partition) to an empty drive on my Mac Pro.
Install the SSD into the MBP.
Boot into Target Disk Mode so the SSD mounts on the MP. Then use the MP's Disk Utility to format SSD to correct settings.
Clone drive containing 10.6.8 from MP to MBP's SSD.
Boot into Target Disk Mode (the other way) so MP's drives mount onto MBP. Move wanted files from old HD to new SSD.
Thanks for taking the time to help out!

I purchased a USB 3 enclosure from OWC and inserted my new SSD. Plugged it into my 2011 MBP with SL and used Disk Utility to Restore my internal MBP HDD over to my SSD. Afterwards I tested the SSD to be sure I could boot from it. Last, I installed it into my MBP and it booted up with no issue. Everything went smooth.

Cannot boot Snow Leopard from external FireWire drive

I use a Western Digital My Passport Studio 500 GB external drive to back up my MacBook Pro with Time Machine. I had created a 30 GB Leopard boot partition with various utilities and tools; since the small drive goes wherever the laptop goes, I figured it might come in handy to be able to boot the computer in the event something went wrong with its internal 250 GB drive.
Over the weekend, I upgraded the external drive to Snow Leopard, and now it can no longer be used to boot the laptop. The symptoms are truly weird. Holding down the Option key while rebooting does not show the external drive unless I disconnect and reconnect the FireWire cable. The drive then shows up. I select it, and it appears to begin to boot, then it just sits on the gray screen with the little round thingie turning for a long time (five to ten minutes). Eventually, the system boots from its internal drive. This happens regardless of whether I'm connected by means of FireWire 400 or 800.
After spending a lot of time looking at the usual suspects (cables, permissions, PRAM, etc.) I reinstalled Sand Leopard (OK, 10.5) and lo and behold, the drive boots again (though for some reason I still have to go through the disconnect/reconnect routine). Clearly, something in the OS has changed with respect to the way booting from external drives is handled.
On the positive side, I have none of the symptoms described in other threads: Time Machine works flawlessly, and both the boot partition and the Time Machine partition appear on the Snow Leopard desktop every time I connect the drive.
Does anyone have the same issues? Does anyone know of a workaround?
Thanks,
Daniel

Hi,
Working from a MacBook Pro 2.4 (Santa Rosa) with 4gb ram, running OS 10.5.7-
(All external HDs are 7200 rpm)
Shortly after our fresh install of Snow Leopard onto a new but already tested External 1.5 Seagate Barracuda (with the most current firmware), in an OWC Mercury Elite enclosure-
We installed Snow Leopard smoothly to that external HD without any issues, and it booted up from that 1.5T external HD, and worked fine.
Then, still working from the MacBook Pro, I turned on and booted another external HD (a Newertech Guardian Maximus RAID running 10.4.11 via FW800, daisy chained to the 1.5T External with Snow Leopard newly installed.
Again that's MacBook Pro <FW800> Snowy external HD <FW800> 10.4.11 RAID (booted & working from the RAID).
But when I tried to bootup up Snow Leopard, after doing the work on the 10.4.11 RAID-
It would not boot up.
Though Snowy would appear as an available Start Up disk, each time it was selected as the Boot drive,
the Internal HD OS 10.5.7 booted instead.
I changed around the cables and tried repeatedly.
Same result, no Snowy boot.
Even after the OS 10.4.11 external RAID was power down, and disconnected.
After some looking around, I found this forum:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2136208&tstart=0
Got me thinking.
I tried the USB, and it booted !
I tried the FW400, and it booted !
And mysteriously, at this point- I tried the FW800, and it booted !
And then, the MBP boots seemed to reliably boot from that external, via FW800.
Bizarre.
Snow Cat needs to be taught originally how to find FW800 from the bottom up ?
Turns out, Snow Leopard doesn't like booting,
if the preceding boot was on the 10.4.11 RAID, and work was done with programs there.
So, once again, I repeated this process:
After working with programs on the 10.4.11 external HD,
the MBP would not boot the Snow Leopard external HD,
it defaulted to booting from the MBP internal HD OS 10.5 via FW800.
even though Snowy was selected for Start Up.
This was the case repeatedly.
(It would also boot from the 10.4.11 external RAID, if it were selected for Start Up.)
(In each of these tests below, I only rebooted the computer at each test. I did no work with programs on the various HDs.)
SO, once again, at this point of the process:
I plugged in that Snowy external HD via FW400,
and it booted up fine !
Then I booted up from the Internal 10.5, and tried to boot Snowy via FW800 again.
It worked !
Then I turned on the 10.4.11 RAID external HD, and tried to reboot from the Snowy external HD.
It worked too !
Then I booted from the 10.4.11 RAID, it came up fine.
Then booted from the Snowy, it came up fine.
Then booted from the Internal HD 10.5, it came up fine.
Then booted from Snowy again, it came up fine.
Then I turned off the 10.4.11 HD, booted from Snowy, it came up fine.
Then booted from the Internal, it came up fine.
Then tried Snowy one last time, it came up fine.
Anyway, the issue is:
It works fine-
Except when I do work within the programs on the 10.4.11 external RAID.
Then I have to use FW400 or USB to get it to boot once again . . .
Regardless of whether the other external HD is removed from the system.
It's some sort of flaw, and totally repeatable in testing.
Hopefully, it will be fixed soon.
Howard

Installing OS X Snow Leopard on External Drive Error

Hey,
I recently upgraded my Late 2010 MBP to OS X Lion and am trying to install OS X Snow Leopard onto an external hard drive and keep getting a strange error message.
You can't use this version of the application Install Mac OS X with this version of Mac OS X.
You have install Mac OS X 23.1
I'm using a Snow Leopard disk which I got from Apple.
Any thoughts on how I can get around this?

Had no luck,
Mac just sat loading for a few minutes and kept getting the "Your computer needs to restart. Hold down the power button" message.
Any other thoughts?
Disk is clean, no scratches and opens up perfectly in Finder.

Install snow leopard from external hard drive-terminal problems!

hi everybody ,
i have a big problem :s
wanted to restore and getting "Restore Failure Could not find any scan information... then i've followed some terminal commands..finished restoring and couldn't boot cause i only find Macintosh HD when i use "alt option" when i restart my macbook pro and even if i go to "startup Disk" i can find my partition of the external hard drive but when i click on it nd do retart it's can't boot ...another thing is tht m having a slow start and it's ask for my Password (i've no problem with password it just doesn't ask me to enter it before and i have internet and server failure)
Due to terminal commands?? :((
Plz help :s

"How to install Snow Leopard from an External Hard Drive"
* Launch Disk Utility
* Select the External Firewire/USB device that you want to use as the boot drive for the upgrade
* Click “Partition” from the menu options
* Select 1 Partition, then click “Options” below the partition scheme
* Select the top option for “GUID Partition Table” – it MUST be GUID to be bootable!
* Click OK to create the GUID partition (this will reformat the drive, ie: all data is lost)
* Next, click the “Restore” tab within Disk Utility
* Select your newly made Snow Leopard 10.6 Install DVD image and restore this image to the GUID partition you just created OR…
* Alternatively, you can select the Snow Leopard Install DVD and restore directly from the DVD to the GUID partition
* After the restoration is complete, your GUID partition will now be bootable by Mac OS X!
* Reboot the Mac holding down the “Option” key to pull up the boot loader, select the Snow Leopard install drive you just created rather than your default Mac OS hard drive
* Install Snow Leopard as usual!
Hope this helps!

Need help in installing Snow Leopard without DVD drive

Hi,
I have a White Macbook 2008 model with 2.1 ghz processor and 1 GB Ram. The dvd rom is not working in my machine. It spits out the dvd's 99 out of 100 times.
I need to upgrade from 10.5.8 to 10.6. Apple has sent me a single disk to install snow leopard.
I am not willing to invest in new dvd drive either internal or external. Needed help on ways to install snow leopard please apart from using the dvd option.
I do have a Firewire 400 cable but i do not know anybody anymore who has a mac machine with 400 port.
Hence the cable is also useless and i cannot connect to anyother macbook and do the install using their drive.
Please suggest.
Regards,
Rahul

There are no direct options. Find a friend with a Mac that has a working optical drive. Buy an 8GB USB flash drive. Partition and format it for the Mac then clone the mounted DVD to the flash drive. Take it back to your computer and boot from the flash drive.
Boot Using OPTION key:
1. Restart the computer.
2. Immediately after the chime press and hold down the
"OPTION" key.
3. Release the key when the boot manager appears.
4. Select the disk icon for the flash drive.
5. Click on the arrow button below the icon.

Cannot install Snow Leopard on Late 2006 iMac with 10.5.8

I tried already two times to update my iMac (currently on OS X Leopard 10.5.8) to Snow Leopard. The update process runs for about 20 minutes. The iMac restarts, and then there's a message that Snow Leopard cannot be installed. One shall contact the software's manufacturer. I checked in the Installer log file and it says something like it could not u(n)mount a volume.
There are 2 external hard drives connected to the iMac via FireWire (one for TimeMachine). Do I have to disconnect them before installing? There's also a TV tuner (DVB-S) from Terratec connected via USB and EyeTV (a version compatible to Snow Leopard) is installed. I already thought that it is maybe the EyeTV software (that came with the Terratec tuner) that prevents the installer from proceeding ...
As stated, I gave it two tries:
The first time I booted the iMac from an external hard drive with 10.5.8 installed on it, ran disk utility to check, repair permissions and verify the iMac's internal disk (--> everything was fine) and then inserted the Snow Leopard DVD and launched the installer.
The second time I booted the iMac from its internal hard disk (with 10.5.8) (=the disk on which I wanted to install Snow Leopard), inserted the DVD and launched the installer.
No success in both cases.
Any suggestions, help ??
Thanks a lot in advance!
Rainer

I think it will work if you restart from the Snow Leopard installation disc. Insert disc. Restart with the C key held down to force startup from the optical drive. You have already done a +Repair Disk+, which is a smart move before doing any system installation. So when Installer comes up, just proceed with the installation targeting your internal drive.

Can't Install Snow Leopard on new drive

I'm having a relatively serious problem with upgrading my hardware. I have a Mac Pro tower with an empty HD slot into which I installed a new drive which mounts properly.
My plan was to simply move everything from the old hard drive to the new one, using Disk Utility's "Restore" function.
That seemed to work fine, but when I restarted and attempted to switch startup disks, selecting the new drive caused an immediate kernel panic (the grey screen saying "You need to restart your computer") which was preceeded momentarily by some very strange dos-like text in the upper left hand corner of the screen.
So after several attempts, I gave up and tried to simply install snow-leopard on the new drive. That never even got started. While the snow leopard installer would happily install the OS on any of my external drives that had enough free space, the new drive (despite the fact that it was mounted on the system) would not even show up in the list of drives to select in the Snow Leopard installer.
I checked the formatting of the drive, and it seems to be the same as both my current startup disk, and the external drive that the OS could be installed on.
How can I move my entire system to this new drive without causing instant kernel panics? Thanks in advance for any help!
Cheers,
Ari

Interesting. Yes, I think that is what macjack had in mind. However, after doing what macjack said, your drive would be erased Mac OS X extended (journaled), and, after shutting down disk utility, you could just continue the install you would have started. At the end of the install, you could restore your files, data, settings, and apps from your other drive. The choice, of course is yours. If I were doing it, I would perfer the first alternative.

Cannot install Snow Leopard onto external drive

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