External boot up disk PPC versus Intel

I am currently travelling with an external HD that is a clone of my G5 PPC iMac. It has a fully functioning OS 10.4.11 on it and I can use it as a boot up disk.
I normally stay with a friend who has a PPC Mac, and can boot up using this HD so that it 'appears' as if I am on my G5. Then when I get home, I synchronise the HD with the G5 to bring the latter up to date.
This time I am staying with another friend who has an Intel Macbook. I am unable to boot up using the external HD. Is there any way round this so that I can somehow work with the external HD as the disk I am using and altering while I work?
Thanks, Nick
Message was edited by: Nicholas Law

For various reasons, I have not been able to have a go at this yet, but will have an opportunity to do so in early June.
Malcolm
Thanks for this clarification. I don't have Leopard (yet).
BDAqua
The Intel Mac owner, who has OS 10.4.11, is certainly willing to set up a new account for me. When I travel, I wish to access three essential applications, Mail, Address Book and Safari on my OS 10.4.11-PPC-formatted external drive, so that I 'see' MY e-mails, e-mail addresses, and bookmarks. I assume that if I boot up using the Intel Mac and go into my new account on it, I will see no data at all for these three applications, unless there is some way I can import them from the external drive. Is this possible and if so how? Or perhaps the question should be rephrased as whether it possible to 'sync' the Mail, Address Book and Safari applications between the external drive and my account on the Intel Mac HD?
I'd be grateful for any further advice. Thank you.
Nick

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(36494)

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(34529)

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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.
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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.
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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?
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Disk Utility Unable to Repair External FireWire Hard Disk

Hello all.
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Hi Kappy,
I knew there was something about "not mixing" PPC and Intel versions of dealing with the external drive.
The drive was originally prepared on an Intel Mac mini Core Duo. But it should also mount normally on a PPC mac as an external hard drive right?
Here's the sequence of events:
1. Tried to boot from the Back Up/Clone Drive of the Mac mini Core Duo, through my MacBook Core 2 Duo, but failed to boot up
I had to shut down the MacBook (prolonged Bluescreen)
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Clone with SuperDuper
After that check again with DU, not everything is alright, there are errors.
4. Brought the drive home, try to mount on my iMac G5, nothing happens.
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5. So anyway, I have no other option, I ran Disk Warrior 4 from my PPC iMac G5 and scan the ext drive, trying to fix it.
It reported the drive is too damaged to be replace with a new Directory, but gave me a Preview Mode. I use this to copy some data out.
But not sure if the data is OK or not.
6. After that, I was able to mount the drive in my iMac G5, so I just use DU and erase and reformat the drive, with Zero Data
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Thanks and cheers

Can PPC and Intel OS's be on the same hard drive?

I do a lot of work on Apple computers for clients.
I have made it a habit to bring firewire hard drives with OS X installed to my work locations so I can boot peoples' computers from my own, clean OS for numerous troubleshooting purposes.
I was hoping to take a big hard drive I have, partition it into 4 parts, and install 10.4 Intel, 10.4 PPC, 10.5 Intel, and 10.5 PPC.
But after I installed the PPC 10.4, I went to my macbook pro and tried to install 10.5 Intel.....and it wouldn't let me!
So now I am learning about the Apple Partition Map format for a drive versus the GUID format and that basically one is for PPC and the other for Intel.
But I would like to know if there is any way to format a drive in such a way that I can indeed install PPC and Intel version of an OS onto one physical drive in separate partitions???
anyone?

It's not intuitive but it's possible. You must set up your external drive using the APT partition map. Install the PPC version of OS X on one partition. Now here's the trick: You must install an Intel version of Leopard on a drive that has been partitioned using GPT. Then clone that installed version to another partition the external drive that now has the PPC version of Leopard. You now have a PPC version of Leopard on one partition and in Intel version on the other partition. You will find you can boot an Intel Mac from that partition even though the drive is partitioned APT.
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PPC Migrator Intel MacBookPro: Stalling

Hey all,
I just got my new MacBook Pro the other day. It's been way too long since I purchased a new Mac... in fact my previous machine was a trusty 1GHz Titanium Powerbook that has served me very well. Unfortunately, the screen is fading to white in the middle and the power management unit won't reset, its overheating the battery and itself and I think the logic board is getting a bit toasty.
Well, I opened the box, fired up the new 'Book and jumped right in to attempt a migration, seemed simple enough. Unfortunately , the new MacBook Pro is only FW800 and the old 'Book is FW400. So I first attempted a direct ethernet patch cable connection as described in the manual. No luck, the machines won't communicate. Next I tried a network connection, things ran fine for hours and then evidently the old 'Book stopped transmitting. I tried resuming this process after some restarts but it continued to stall.
Next I tried setting up an ad hoc wireless connection between the two and things would run smooth for a while and then they would stall.
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Okay, I'll concede here and accept that I should really just move stuff manually. I have a MobileMe account so getting calendars, etc. will be no problem. Applications may be a bit more tricky but I'll persevere.
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Please help me Kappy-wan-kenobi, you're my only hope.
Heathmun

heathmun wrote:
Hey all,
I just got my new MacBook Pro the other day. It's been way too long since I purchased a new Mac... in fact my previous machine was a trusty 1GHz Titanium Powerbook that has served me very well. Unfortunately, the screen is fading to white in the middle and the power management unit won't reset, its overheating the battery and itself and I think the logic board is getting a bit toasty.
Well, I opened the box, fired up the new 'Book and jumped right in to attempt a migration, seemed simple enough. Unfortunately , the new MacBook Pro is only FW800 and the old 'Book is FW400.
you can get a FW800 to FW400 cable.
another option is to clone your old hard drive to an external drive which has both FW 800 and FW 400 connectors. or just use a USB drive. you can then plug it into the new computer and migrate from that.
So I first attempted a direct ethernet patch cable connection as described in the manual. No luck, the machines won't communicate. Next I tried a network connection, things ran fine for hours and then evidently the old 'Book stopped transmitting. I tried resuming this process after some restarts but it continued to stall.
Next I tried setting up an ad hoc wireless connection between the two and things would run smooth for a while and then they would stall.
So, now digging into these forums I read that most consider a PPC-to-Intel migration a "no-no".
It's not really a non-no. It's just something to be wary of. many people do it without a problem but you should know what you are jumping into when doing it.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=435350&tstart=0
Great. I hate when you take Apple's tech information for granted only to find out the often more knowledgeable community here knows better (jab).
Okay, I'll concede here and accept that I should really just move stuff manually. I have a MobileMe account so getting calendars, etc. will be no problem. Applications may be a bit more tricky but I'll persevere.
The big concern I have is that now some things have been transfered and I'm not sure what they are or where they are... can I reset my new 'Book back to "out of the box factory settings, content, and configuration"?
sure. just boot from the install disk 1 that came with your computer and do an erase and install. to boot from the DVD insert it, reboot and hold "c" at the chime.
Please help me Kappy-wan-kenobi, you're my only hope.
Heathmun

Cloning drive to external & partitioning using Disk Utility.....!

Hi,
I wonder if someone is able to answer my questions and offer some advice and help.....?
I am purchasing a new external drive and would like to know how to clone the internal drive of my Power Mac G4 using disk Utility to the external drive, so that it is also bootable. I have seen that there seems to be more then one way of doing this within disk utility, but would like to know which is the best way?
1. Please could you take me thorough the steps as I have never done this before?
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3. Prior to partitioning the drive is it necessary to delete the new external drive even though there is nothing on it? As I read someone that this need to be done, but didn't quite get that!
Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance

Hello,
Hopefully it'll be an External Firewire drive, as USB cannit be booted from on PPC Macs.
I wouldn't use Disk Utility, there are easier ones for free.
I strongly recommend that you get a good Firewire drive to Clone your Internal drive to...
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/firewire+drives
Many of those come with Backup SW, or...
Get carbon copy cloner to make an exact copy of your old HD to the New one...
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
Or SuperDuper...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/
2. It depends how big the new drive is & how much space is used on the current drive.
OSX loves lots of free space on it's boot drive for VM & other temp files, I don't feel 50% is too much free space to leave.
3. Normally isn't needed to Zero the Drive, but you may have to foprmat it...
How to format your disks...
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/partitioning_tiger.html
Thanks to Pondini, Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks...
http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/DU.html

PPC to Intel 10.5 migration

So, I have a G4 running 10.5 server. I want to move it to a intel machine. What is the best way to migrate at 10.5 > 10.5 server, but going from PPC to Intel.
Thanks,Scott

How much you do is up to you. I'd boot the G4 from a DVD or another drive and use Apple Disk Utility to repair disk, repair permissions and then Restore to another volume which you will use on the Intel server. Make sure the Intel drive is formatted GUID in Disk Utility>Parition>Options.
The G4 drive module will be formatted incorrectly (Apple partition map) for Intel which needs GUID, but you can clone using Carbon Copy Cloner or Apple Disk Utility to a new GUID drive for the intel. The intel should run the cloned disk fine, switch off the old server before booting the new one.

Unable to copy hard drive on to external device from Disk Utility. Getting error message "cannot allocate memory".

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External boot up disk PPC versus Intel

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