External Boot Disk setup?

I have just recently purchased a new Iomega tripe connection external drive and have it connected to my B&W G4 using firewire. My goal is to create a bootable external drive that I can use to connect and run Disk Warrior and other utilties at any given time, plus allow for more room in storing files.
I split the new 400 GB drive into two partitions using Disk Utility on the OSX 10.4.3 CD. I made the first one 40GB and was hoping to "clone" my exisitng 40 GB internal drive (with all applications, etc.) onto it. I formatted each using Mac OSX (journaled). Using DataBackup from Prosoft, I successfully "cloned" my existing HD to the first partition of the Iomega drive.
From the System Preferences, I can select the firewire partition with OSX as the startup disk, but when it restarts it returns to my original ATA drive as the startup. Do I need to reformat the firewire drive in another way to have it recognized as a startup disk? Also, when I tried to install to the firewire disk from the OSX install CD, it said I couldn't install it directly to this drive. Not sure what can help with this issue, but any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I'm sorry. I thought B&W was "black" and white. I have a G4, 733 MHz system.
The partition name is different than the drive I cloned (original was "David's G4" and the partition name is "Pelican_1".) But it was weird that the OS wasn't able to be installed directly first, so I went to clone the "bootable" disk mentioned above...hoping it would make the partition bootable as well (since it included the OS, applications, etc.)
It recognizes it in systme preferences, but won't boot from it - reverting back to the original David's G4 drive (internal.)

Similar Messages

External boot disk, options?

Hi all I am considering buying a new mac mini which comes loaded with Mountain lion,
I want to have an external boot disk with Snow Leopard, so that I can run some legacy Rosetta apps
Q1. will Snow Leopard run successfully on the latest mac minis?
Q2. what is my best option for an external boot drive
I want a drive that will be ideally powered from the computer and that wakes up fast enough to boot an OS without the computer defaulting to the internal Mountain Lion OS
USB or firewire, whichever is best
what are your reccommendations?
cheers Robert

The current Mac Mini (mid-2011) can be retrofitted to have Snow Leopard work on it. There is a very comprehensive thread here on this site.
Look for the work of Newfoundglory:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/19463681?ac_cid=tw123456#19463681

PSCS5 will not open from external boot disk

Because OS 10.8.2 was the worst update in Apple history, for the first time ever I decided to do the 10.8.3 update on an external boot disk before sacrificing my internal disk. I used Super Duper to make a bootable clone of my internal , booted from the external and then did the combo update. It seemed to be ok although they didn't fix the scroll bars in Safari as I had hoped. The first app I tried was Photoshop CS 5.1. It tried to open but I got a window that said "could not inialize scratch disk because disk could not be found". After I clicked OK on that, another window said "could not open because disk could not be found" . I have never tried to open Photoshop any version from a bootable backup before and I don't know what this means. The scratch disk for Photoshop is set to be my internal drive Macintosh HD. Why would it not find it? If I were booting from my internal and had set the scratch to the external it would find it. Why would the app be looking for itself on another disk?
After recloning my internal which is still 10.8.2, I have not yet booted from the external to see if the problem was somehow caused by 10.8.3, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. People have reported the usual weird behavior of an upgrade already on forums, but not this paricular problem
I am runninga 2011 mini with dual i7 and 8 GB of RAM.

Just to be clear, resetting the Photoshop prefs is troubleshooting 101. I'll admit that since Photoshop CS and OS X, the need for resetting the prefs has gone way down (although I had a lot of problems when Photoshop first included GPU).
However, if you EVER have a hang/force quit or an actual crash, you should seriously consider resetting the prefs because, well, in a hang or crash, that's when pref can get corrupted...afterwhich Photoshop can misbehave and cause problems.
But in this case, resetting the prefs was a fix for the issue where the exact directory path for a scratch disk no longer existed and thus kept PS from even launching...
Although the OP hasn't given an update, I'm 99.9999% sure his Photoshop is back to launching correctly...and that the issue was fixed by trashing the prefs.

Imac retina external boot disk

Anyone have an iMac retina and using an external boot disk? Worked fine on my iMac from last year, but the new iMac won't boot from the several i tried - thunderbolt, usb drive. Oddly the only thing that seems to work is a USB stick.
The others just give the circle-with-a-line-through-it icon showing no boot environment found.
Thanks for any ideas.

The current Mac Mini (mid-2011) can be retrofitted to have Snow Leopard work on it. There is a very comprehensive thread here on this site.
Look for the work of Newfoundglory:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/19463681?ac_cid=tw123456#19463681

Security when Using an External Boot Disk

Hi All.
I'm about to purchase a new external hard drive for using as a boot disk and was wondering what securities you can now enforce on a partition with OSX 10.6
The main purpose for the external boot disk is for creating a shared usage resource for running applications. As I will be allowing others to use this drive, I am concerned about the security implications of using it with one of my macs, mainly because of viruses and data corruption.
I know that partitions/external drives used for booting Windows are secure because the windows partition is set to read only for other partitions/drives, preventing "infections".
The question is: Can I set the permissions/security for an external boot disk (OSX 10.6) partition so that if I use it with one of my machines, my internal hard drive will be secure from any viruses, corruptions, etc.
If you can, or if there's anything else I can do to the same ends, please can you tell me how (or post a link to instructions/advice)
Thanks in advance for your help.

Thomas A Reed wrote:
I'm glad you enjoyed reading my [Mac Virus guide|http://www.reedcorner.net/thomas/guides/macvirus>, but it sounds like it has not adequately impressed on you the extreme rarity of Mac malware at this time, or the low threat level. Also, it sounds like you're still operating under a couple misconceptions. Firstly:
The external boot drive idea seemed like the perfect solution. As it's the boot drive, when it's used, it's permissions will be enforced on the user. Theoretically this should provide solid protection from trojans, obviously not for that actual boot drive, but for my internal HD.
Keep in mind that trojans are not viruses... they are not going to spread themselves by attaching to other files. (Though, if they did, I'm not sure why you think they wouldn't be able to affect drives other than the boot drive.) Also, malware today is not a juvenile prank aimed at erasing your files. (Though, again, if it was, I'm not sure why you think it wouldn't be able to affect drives other than the boot drive.) Malware these days is big business, aimed at stealing your personal information or turning your machine into a slave to help send spam or crack other machines.
You also say:
The main threat will be from freeware
For this reason, AV software can actually cause more risk. No AV software catches all malware, so by becoming over-reliant on it, you don't use the filter between your ears. That filter is all that is needed to avoid Mac malware. And keep in mind that Mac malware is extremely rare.
@Thomas. I know how rare mac malware is, after a decade and a half of using macs I've yet to knowingly come across any.
The reason for my assumption that a secondary boot drive would afford me more protection is: As with any partition you can set the read/write permissions. Without write permissions, surely a virus cannot copy itself onto another drive.
The important thing is that this secondary boot drive would not contain any personal details, and would not be used for online purchases/transactions. Thus if malware was downloaded onto the drive, it couldn't access sensitive data.
Furthermore when I've finished working with someone, I can scrub the drive and restore from a cloned backup, thus eliminating any maleware that might be on it.
The most common freeware that will be downloaded will be codecs for video. There often is no way to get around this. If the person I'm working with has video in an unsupported format they need this code to use their footage. As you pointed out this is the kind of area that people use to hide trojans (not just for ****!).
Not at all. Again, trojans are not viruses... they do not show up on your machine attached to other software.
This has confused me a little. I thought that Trojans are written as a pice of code that can be hidden within another program. eg. A video encoder program can contain malware but still also behave like a normal encoder when you run it?
Thanks again for your help.

Install BootCamp windows 8 on external Boot Disk

I have no internal hard disk, for other reasons. I need to install Windows 8 on an external hard disk, which is partitioned, and I boot from one partition (and the drive is GUID). My windows 8 is in the form of an iso, and I cannot burn it to a disk, although I could burn it to a USB drive. If you need any other info, I can provide it.
Thanks in advance,
Oscar Simpson

You cannot install Windows on an external drive. Microsoft only allows you to install it on an internal drive.
There's a Windows 8 feature called Windows To Go, that allows you to put your Windows system onto an external drive, but to do this, you need Windows 8 installed on the internal drive

One external boot disk for multiple machines

i'm trying to find out if this is possible, but it's quite hard to find information on this
i want to install mountain lion on an external ssd disk (connected via thunderbolt or firewire) and use it as boot disk on a macbook pro (2012), imac (late2009) and a mac pro(not sure about the model).
will this be possible and a safe solution. will be used for music production with logic9 on a dayly basis reliability is key.
hope to find someone that have tried this out and can share some advices..
thanks

i'll be surprised if anyone can give you 100% guarantee that this will work fine.
It will definitely work on the computer you install it from.
Plugging the SSD to other machine - although it may start up - in my opinion it has "Kernel Panic" written all over it.
Would be probably OK with identical Mac models but you are talking about a range of Macs with different hardware in.
It will be interesting if someone does it and posts on this subject.

External 'boot disk' for G5 won't boot

First attempt was to make an OS 10.5.? boot disk from the installation DVD. The second attempt was to use Carbon Copy Cloner to make an exact duplicate of the internal Boot Macintosh HD disk. Both onto one of a pair of external 4Tb Iomega drives. Connection is Firewire 800 daisychain. The external drive in question is the last in the daisychain. The G5 has twin internal drives already and the G5 will boot happily from either. (One is 10.5.8, the second is 10.4.11/Classic.)
Both installations attempts on the #2 4Tb drive appeared to "work". The now CCC version is an exact copy of the main internal drive and is OS 10.5.8. 'Startup Disk' appears to recognise it as a system boot disk. I can select it for booting on restart but it fails to do so and eventually finds the main internal drive after some wait.
Holding down the Option key as you restart the machine brings up just the two choices of the two internal drives to start from - no external drive choice.
This all used to work just fine in the days of SCSI...
I'm presuming altering the order of the external drives on the Firewire chain won't make any difference?

jsd2 wrote:
Both onto one of a pair of external 4Tb Iomega drives.
I wonder if such a drive is just too big to boot a PPC Mac.
Hmm. Interesting thought. You have a good point.
I just found this technote:
*Secrets of the GPT*
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#technotes/tn2166/_index.html
It contains the following regarding the Apple Partition Map scheme:
APM is restricted to 32-bits worth of blocks. With a standard block size of 512 bytes, this translates to a maximum disk size of 2 TB.
In Disk Utility, if you again click on the upper icon as before, and look again at the lower right of the window, what does it say for "Total Capacity?" Does it report the full 4TB?
It reports the full size - strictly it reports 3.6Tb - ie well over 2Tb.
(I do have the hardware option of switching to twin 2Tb on these 4Tb Iomega drives and strictly, that is what is inside the physical housing. It's a matter of throwing some switches. Of course, I don't actually want 2Tb drives. )
MacBook Pro (10.5.8) Power Mac G5
It might be of interest regarding the capability of the drive enclosure hardware to connect the drive to your MacBook Pro, repartition it as GUID (which will erase it), install OS X on it or clone the MBP to it, and then see if the MBP will boot from it.
Hmm. I don't think I want to do that as the MBP is an Intel machine and the G5 isn't. It won't solve the actual problem. (At least I can't see how it will.) Though I see what you are getting at.
It's probably worth a shot emailing Iomega, I guess.

Creating external boot disk from an earlier time?

I've put a lot of progs on my MBP. No probs with that, but for my work, should it ever go down, I'd like to have a boot-able external drive with only the progs I need at the time so I can be back up and running asap. (Yes, I know I should have thought of this earlier.)
I could uninstall all the new stuff, create a boota-ble drive, then re-install...
but I don't want to.
So is there a way to create a boot-able drive from an earlier time using TM? so that, for instance, it could boot up to what it used to be a month ago? In theory all the data is there in TM to do just that...
or
Here's a workaround: Can I take the MBP to a month ago and create a boot-able drive, then use TM to come back to the present?

Karel Bata wrote:
So is there a way to create a boot-able drive from an earlier time using TM?
Try restoring from the previous TM backup to a clean disk or partition. Then use SuperDuper or CarbonCopy Cloner to create a bootable clone.
-mj

SSD EXTERNAL BOOT DISK REPAIR - FEW TIMES IMPOSSIBLE LATER PERFORMED

Since approx may I boot my iMac from external 500 GB Samsung SSD on Seagate Goflex TB adapter. Installed story here https://discussions.apple.com/message/22045230#22045230.
Later, after a TB SW upgrade may be in June I experienced the Freezing only 2 or 3 times apparently without any problem (after new boot no data loss and Mac performing OK).
I did today a routine Disk Verify and Repair. Verify found some minimal problems and suggested to boot from the recovery partition for a full repair.
Instead of boot from the recovery partition I rebooted from the iMac internal original HD (I keep it for safety as an exact clone of the external SSD).
Run disk utility as verify and it refused to verify with message: Disk need to be repaired. Bur Repair was impossible, one or 2 times external SSD not mounted and impossible to mount. Rebooted, now SSD mounted but still repair impossible, Disk Utility suggested backup an reformatting. Tryed again and later repair was performed. Checked again few times: everithing OK. The SSD is now working proprly.
I am now asking how this behaviour could be explained. Could be disk warrior or any other SW of better help for a diagnosys ?
Thanks for any soggestion and best regards.

Backup your files, if possible. Your only recourse is to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X. Do not copy or backup files from Windows. If at all possible boot from another drive like your external HDD by installing OS X on the external drive (unless it is already a bootable drive.) You can then copy your data from the faulty OS X volume before erasing it.
You should never permit your free space to drop so low. One should maintain 10-12 GBs or 10-15% of the volume's total capacity, whichever is greater.
Since this problem will likely recur I suggest you consider just replacing the drive with one that is considerably larger. I would also be sure to arrange to maintain a bootable backup on an external drive in case problems such as this one occur.

Best Practice??? Change from internal boot disk to external disk

I have a mini running 10.5.6 server and it currently boots off it's internal disk. I was hoping to get some feedback/input from others on a good process to convert the system from it's internal boot disk to an external boot disk (firewire).
I wanted minimum downtime during the conversion and I of course, want a complete snapshot on the new boot disk. Lastly, I do not have a local keyboard and console on the system although I could connect one if it seemed to be much easier that way.
In general, I am thinking of the following:
1) Boot into the Leopard Server CD.
2) Use diskutility to Restore from the internal boot disk to the new external boot disk.
3) Choose the new boot disk as the startup disk.
4) Reboot onto new disk.
Is diskutility the best bet?? Meaning will it work this way if the drives are different sizes??
Should I try to clone the disk from the internal boot disk (assuming I shutoff services first) using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner?? But I believe they do not copy over all logfiles, etc..
Or does anyone have a quick overview of a methodology which they have done in the past or just are suggesting might be a better process than the ones I described??
In Summary:
1) From the CD, clone using diskutil and change boot disk
2) From the running OS, clone using SuperDuper or CCC and than reboot onto new disk
3) Something else??
Thank you in advance.

For cloning the machine you have the approach fine. Disk Utility is fine and booting from the CD is the best method. Simply use the restore method.
But why on earth would you want to boot from an external Firewire drive? First, there is the issue of speed. You have a mini, let's assume it is a one generation back Intel. It has an internal SATA drive on a 1.5 Gbps connection. You want to move that to a 400 Mbps Firewire bus? Next, beyond the speed issues, you have a persistence issue. You are taking the boot volume and moving into to a transitory bus. One of Firewire's greatest strengths is easy connection/disconnection. Persistence is not a strong point.
Next, if your plan is to move the boot volume to some form of a Firewire RAID, then you are even penalizing yourself more. The mini has one FireWire port. If you are using two devices and creating a mirror RAID, then you need to daisy chain. Talk about points of failure, asynchronous startup time, bus blocking, etc. Not wise.
Plus, I can not count how many external firewire devices have burnt up in the effort to have small footprints. Lacie and the "let's put a drive in a metal case with no fan" approach = melted drive. Western Digital and Lacie with the "let's make a completely un-reusable external power brick that either breaks in a small breeze or falls out when the heavy guy walks by the server" approach.
If you are looking at a Firewire RAID enclosure, then you are missing the objective of speed as you are limited by the 400 bus. It is nice to say that you have a four drive SATA 2 RAID case running a RAID 5, but you are defeating the purpose of why you bought the raid. The RAID 5 can provide an exponential increase in I/O performance. But that goes out the window because of the slow bus.
If your argument is that "this is a server and my bottleneck is Ethernet," that too does not hold up. You are likely running on a gigabyte network.
For system details check out http://developer.apple.com/documentation/HardwareDrivers/Conceptual/Macmini_0602 /Articles/architecture.html.
Take this with a grain of salt. You caught me on a grumpy day as yesterday I dealt with a melted external firewire drive.
My advice is buy real server class hardware. What is you objective? Drive redundancy? Capacity? A mini is a great dev server. Not a production server. This is your data. Presumably the data that makes your business function. Don't trust it to a single platter. And don't trust it to a consumer level, disposable system. I am not trying to malign the mini. It is a fine machine for its role. Its role however is not to be a production file server. Now as a web server, we are talking a different situation.
Ok, I am rambling. Hope this helps in some way.

I am a OS10.7.4 user. yesterday i bought a Lacie external hard disk but error message appear said " You cant open the applicant LaCie setup assistant because PowerPC applicants are no longer support". please help me how to connect my mac with Lacie??

i am a OS10.7.4 user. yesterday i bought a Lacie external hard disk but error message appear said " You cant open the applicant LaCie setup assistant because PowerPC applicants are no longer support". please help me how to connect my mac with Lacie??

You do not need the Setup Assistant; in fact, you do not need any software on an external hard drive. I have two LaCie's; I erased the drive as soon as I plugged it in. You will need to format it anyway because most hard drives come Windows formatted. So, if you only want to use it with the Mac, highlight it in Disk Utility and choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the format and the GUID Partition scheme under Options. While doing that, it will erase the drive (and get rid of the LaCie software) - once finished, your drive is ready to use for Time Machine or any other backup plans you have for it.

Is it possible to boot or Time Machine restore from an external Thunderbolt disk drive?

(There are several questions - search for "?".)
I purchased a Seagate Backup Plus for Mac Desktop Drive 3 TByte with default USB 3.0 interface, and also acquired the Seagate Thunderbolt Adapter for Backup Plus Desktop Drives and Thunderbolt cable.
I do a redundant backup to the Seagate Drive using both Carbon Copy Cloner (nightly) and Time Machine (hourly) using its Thunderbolt adapter. BTW: One never knows when Time Machine will choke - see discussion titled, "UPDATED: Serious Time Machine bug on Mountain Lion", which I had; Rest In Peace Pondini (James Lewis Pond).
Booting from the external Seagate Backup Plus via Thunderbolt inteface from System Preferences -> Startup Disk:
I select the Time Machine OS X, 10.8.5 Startup Disk (Thunderbolt attached drive), click Restart, confirm my choice, the computer reboots, however, it reboots from the internal Macintosh HD OS X, 10.8.5, NOT the selected external Thunderbolt drive. The SSD drive was used as the Startup Drive, not the selected external Time Machine volume as indicated by the display free disk space command (df(1)) and seeing that the Macintosh HD OS X, 10.8.5 volume is mounted as root. That is very deceptive in that both the internal and external drives will appear in the same manner from a GUI point of view! OS X doesn't even inform me that it did not boot off the selected volume. This is the first half of the problem, that is, Is it possible to boot from an external Thunderbolt disk drive? In my case, the answer is deceptively No. Can anybody else boot off a Thuderbolt attached disk drive? Note that if I remove the Thunderbolt adapter, and attach the drive via its USB 3.0 cable, the MBP boots off the external Seagate Backup Plus just fine, as is expected.
Booting from the external Seagate Backup Plus via Thunderbolt inteface from boot-time "Option - Select startup disk" method:
When I restart the MBP using the startup Option key to select the startup volume, the externally connected Seagate drive ONLY SHOWS UP if it is attached with the USB 3.0 cable, not when it is attached with via the Thunderbolt interface. Can anyone else boot off a Thunderbolt drive with the startup Option key sequence? At least the MBP doesn't deceive me in this case - I know right away that the external Thunderbolt drive is not an option when connected as such.
Time Machine restore from the external Seagate Backup plus via Thunderbolt interface from the "command-R - Recovery Parition" method:
After booting from the recovery partition, I attempt to perform a Time Machine restore from the Thunderbolt connected Seagate Backup drive. When Time Machine attempts to present me with a viable backup Time Machine volume, the external Thunderbolt drive is never offered as an option. So I switch the Time Machine volume to use its USB 3.0 interface, and then Time Machine displays that drive as an option, and the MBP proceeds with the restoration as expected. The interesting thing to note is that while booted in the recovery partition via the Thuderbolt cable, the MBP Disk Utility may be selected, and the Thunderbolt attached drive may be operated on just fine. Can anybody else restore their MBP using Time Machine and the Recovery Partition via the Thunderbolt interface?
This is also a big problem for me in that I am forced to restore my MBP via Carbon Copy Cloner using the USB 3.0 interface, because I cannot even boot off that volume's Thunderbolt interface. Of course, the option may be that I could use yet another eternal USB 3.0 drive, boot from it, and then use Carbon Copy Cloner to restore the Macintosh HD via the aforementioned drive connected by a Thunderbolt cable, but that is less than ideal and not elegant, so I'm not going there.
Another side issue is that the commercially available program, TechTool Pro 7's eDrive, which I installed on the Time Machine volume, will not boot off that eDrive as advertised, but I won't got through those steps here, because that would be beyond the scope of this issue, however, I must say, It does not work either when the Time Machine volume is connected via the Thunderbolt interface, but works just fine when connected via the USB 3.0 interface.

If this helps anybody else make a decision about whether to consider Apple because of Apple's superior customer service:
Apple sells this entire line of drives right in their store, from 1TB to 4TB. I spent 1 and 1/2 hours, yesterday, confirming that the 3TB model IS NOT 100% Thunderbolt compliant. A MBP cannot boot, nor can it Time Machine restore from this drive, though EVERYTHING about the drive is normal.
Apple's South Coast Plaza store management had at least two responses to me personally about how to proceed:
1. Buy a different drive from another drive manufacturer, and to attempt to return the drive to COSTCO. A lead genius suggested going with GTech drives, for instance.
2. Wait for Seagate to fix their problem.
I told Apple management in the store that the drive is advertised as Mac Compatible (see picture) and that it is advertised as being a Thunderbolt drive (see picture). I pressed management that my purchasing decsion to get the best possible MBP Retina was based on the availablity of Inexpensive Devises (raID), and that not having this complete compatibility is a show-stopper for my needs, and that I wanted a refund. Their response? They needed to talk with "Merchendising" to see if they are on or off the hook for these kind of 3rd party assertions, and would get back to me.
I am not holding my breath.
Note: I do not hold this against the Geniuses that helped me, nor against the management I've dealt with, nor the upper level engineers that I've corresponded with through Apple Care - their problem solving skills were helpful - although I could have arrived at similar conclusions given enough $$$. (For instance, try a Lacie TB drive and see if that works - we did, and it did not work. Or, we have a different TB cable and a different TB adapter, let's try those - we did, and it did not work.) I blame myself for not doing enough homework before going with Apple's solutions.

Is it possible to detach an external firewire BOOT disk during sleep?

Hi,
I have an aging PowerBook G4 17 inch (3 years and 3 months) which is still good and fast enough for my needs. Last year the display and motherboard were changed which cost me some money so I would like to hold on to it for one or two more years. Yesterday I suddenly heard a strange noise coming from the hard disk and the Finder and Disk Utility ran extremely slow afterwards for some time. I shut it down, waited a couple of hours and now everything seems to be normal. I take it the hard disk might soon die (Toshiba make, more than 3 years old, a lot of graphics work requiring disk activity). Or 1° I replace the internal hard disk or 2) I buy an external firewire disk to boot from (which I can continue using afterwards if the laptop goes dead). I am leaning towards the second solution. However I would like to know:
1. Is it good behavior to put the computer to sleep, detach the hard disk (from which I booted) and attach it before waking it again? This would make it easy to transport it. I did a test and it seems to work however one test might not be conclusive...
2. Would my system be as fast as with an internal one (assuming I buy an external FireWire 800)?
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
PS: what is the average life of a PowerBook? The sales guy from a local Apple shop told me that after 4 years any Mac is good for the trash.

The sleep removal will work as long as the battery doesn't go flat but is not really good practice to remove a boot disk after startup.
Speed would be reasonable but internal would be better, replacing the internal drives on AlBooks is a bit fiddly but it can be done, see here for a guide.
The guy in the shop was trying to sell you a new Mac, there are people out there still using 10+ year old Macs!

According to the Genius Bar, my HD is dying. I need help with such things as making a boot disk, making sure back up is complete, etc. I have a White early 2008 MacBook running 10.7.3. It is backed up regularly with Time Machine to an external drive.

I am not a real tech type person. MAcBook white early 2008 running 10.7.3. I know I will need a boot disk to restart the computer after I have installed the new drive. I have purchased a Hitachi 500 G, 7200 RPM to install. The computer is backed up regularly using Time Machine to an external hard drive. I nned to know all the steps I need to do before physically changing the hardware.

Do you have your original drive backed up? Is it still working? If so I'd buy an external enclosure and boot from that. Then format your new drive and use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your old drive to the new one.
If you don't have a backup, I'd buy an external drive, use carbon copy cloner to do a backup, then install the new drive and clone back to it.

External Boot Disk setup?

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