External Harddrive w/ Mac OS X Tiger

Question

Hello, I was wondering ----- if I install OS X onto a firewire or usb hard drive, would i be able to boot up using OS X on a PC or other Mac's, like physically have everything that is OS X like full desktop, dock, etc etc functionality?

Answer 1

There are some other limitations not originally stated. Some Macs may not be able to boot of systems you put on that hard drive. Macs will not normally boot off systems older than they shipped with. PowerPC Macs will only boot off
Apple Partition Map formatted partitions, and Intel Macs will only boot off GUID partition formatted partitions. To create a dual Intel Mac/PowerPC Mac boot drive, see this tip:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2006061610374449
PCs can't read such volumes without http://www.mediafour.com/ 's MacDrive.
If you want to create a volume both PCs and Macs can use with read/write capability, but not boot off of without additional software, format the hard drive FAT32.
If you don't mind a volume being read only on a Mac, but can only boot on a PC, NTFS is the formatting that will work. You can make NTFS writable, but not bootable on a Mac with MacFuse
If you share one of these volumes on a network, formatting won't matter as far as saving and reading files between PCs and Macs. Here's how to make a crossplatform network:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=19652
The drive again won't be bootable.
Also when a drive isn't bootable, it really is a data sharing only drive, and no preferences, and no applications can be stored for those applications.
The Dock will let you put on it documents, folders, and drives on the side closest to the trash can regardless of the formatting, as long as the drive will mount on the Mac.
Edit:
This article is a good starting point to find out what system the Mac shipped with:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25517
Message was edited by: a brody