Choosing an external FireWire hard drive to boot from

Hi all, my iMac Hard Drive recently died so i was looking to get an external hard drive to to run it from. I didn't want to pay for an internal hard drive to be fitted because it costs too much and im not confident enough to fit it myself. My question is, would i need a desktop Hard Drive with its own power, or would a portable hard drive be okay? X

Find someone good with tools and a little patience. There are online guides on how to change the drive. I did it on the dining room table (lots of room around, lots of light).
I did it without really following the guides (except getting the screen cover off) and it took 34 minutes (interrupted by a trip to the hardware store to get a set of small Torx drivers).
It's a good opportunity to upgrade as well - I threw in a 2 TB drive. I recovered from the TM volume.
BUT: It would be nice if Apple put in drive access bays on the back of the iMacs. Shouldn't be too much of a problem to solve.

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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

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.
Tony

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.

Installing a Time Machine Backup to an external Firewire Hard Drive

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!

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

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.
So does any body know how to do this?

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
Stefan

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.

External firewire hard drive and iMovie

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?
Thanks

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
http://www.softraid.com/demo.html - manual and demo
Output can be to any drive or partition. When you lauch iMovie it asks where to store your project.
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.
iMovie Discussions

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.)

Using an external firewire hard drive + interface at the same time?

Hi Guys,
It seems that the issues I am having with BFD2 not streaming properly might be to do with the slow USB transfer rate. (Thanks to everyone who has helped with this issue!)
So... I am thinking of getting an external firewire hard drive for my iMac.
Thing is, my audio interface also uses firewire (Mackie Onyx 1220)... can they share using a hub? Will one slow the other down? What if I also run another hard drive on firewire for my audio, will two FW drives and the audio interface all be able to share the one firewire port using a hub?
At the moment, all my drives have their own direct USB port, is going to shared firewire a step forward or a step backwards?
Cheers and thanks,
Mike

Gorwel Owen1 wrote:
On my G4 (roughly 30 % the power of your MBP)
Is this with an external drive and interface?
No Interface (yes, I use built in audio), but that shouldn't make a difference in CPU use.
I have four Internal drives. But that shouldn't make a difference either
That is very dependent on what you put on these tracks
I was thinking mainly about recording i.e. 8 simultaneous tracks whilst playing back up to about 16. I generally avoid plug-ins until mixing anyway. Sounds like I should be OK.
Absolutely.
but when logic overloads (when the CPU can't process audio in realtime anymore) Logic simply stops playback.
When I tried using a drive and interface on the same bus a few years ago I experienced minor glitching rather than stopping. Perhaps Logic has been improved in this respect.
P.S. How do you 'quote'in the forum?
Just above the field where you type replies in, there are 5 symbols - they are buttons.
The first three work on selected text (making it Bold, Italic and Underlined). The abc-tick is spell-checking and the " sign means Quote. When you click it, the message you reply to is inserted wherever your cursor is.
The preview tab lets you see how the message will look, giving an opportunity to edit. You cannot edit in preview mode though, just look. Only in Compose can you edit.

External Firewire hard drive won't mount after 10.4.10 update

I see many posts about USB drives not mounting after 10.4.10 update. Just lending my voice to that issue (my USB drive won't work either) as well as the 10.4.10 update breaking Firewire drives.
Hope a fix is coming. No backups are scaaaary.

How to fix the problem of a missing external Hard Drive (Firewire) after it vanishes from you desktop after installing 10.4.10 update.
I have a iMac PPC (Non intel). Aparently my system upated installed the wrong version of 10.4.10 and thus my external firewire hard drives a 320 GB Westerndigital My Book, and Acomdata 80 GB, and aWestern Digital 160 GB media center all vanished from the desktop.
The instructions below should be credited to several different people. I found various version of these steps in the Discussion. I combines a few of them into this one 10 step fix and it worked for me. I hope it works for you.
1) Shut down you computer
2) Unplug all peripherals (i.e USB and Firewire, I left computer power plug in as well as ethernet and Keyboard+ Mouse) and leave along for 30 Minutes
3) Restart holding down the Command (Apple) + Option + P + R keys for three startup bongs, then release the keys and your computer will start up as usual.
4) Verify and repair disk Permission using Disk Utility. (Several things were repaired here)
5) Instal 10.4.10 Combo PPC
6) Restart Again
7) Again repair Disk permissions (None of mine needed to be repaired fyi this time)
8) Unplug Power cable and Firewire cable from External Hard Drive (leave along for 1 minute)
9) Reconnect power to Firewire External Drive first then the Firewire cable to the drive second, then the firewire cable from the Drive to the computer last.
10) Turn on your Firewire Drive... you will head it spin up and eventually show up on your desktop just like it did before the 10.4.10 update.

How to move iTunes Library/Media Files to external firewire Hard Drive and make it the master library, and then point iTunes to that when adding new content??

How to move iTunes Library/Media Files to external firewire Hard Drive and make it the master library, and then point iTunes to that when adding new content??

Copy your ENTIRE iTunes FOLDER to an External Drive...
Full Details Here > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751
To Operate iTunes from the External Drive...
Start iTunes with the Option key held down and guide it to the new location of the library.
Be Sure the drive is Formatted Mac OS Extended (journaled)
Also... have a look at these 2 Videos...
http://macmost.com/moving-your-itunes-library.html
http://macmost.com/moving-your-itunes-media-to-an-external-drive.html

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,

Accessing external firewire hard drive from Finder

I have a Lacie Porsche 250 GB firewire hard drive. The icon appears on the desktop but when I double click on it to view it's contents the finder 'blinks' and closes all open windows (including the momentarily opened hard drive window).
I can access the drive from within applications (using 'open' command, but never directly from the finder. I have visited the Lacie support site and updated the software, firmware, etc.
Very grateful for any advice on how i can get the hard drive to start behaving.

OK ...
Run MainMenu
And under "Other Tasks" select
"Remove all .DS_Store files" then re Boot

Choosing an external FireWire hard drive to boot from

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