How do I create a bootable hard drive partition?

Hello,
Would someone out there be kind enough to give me step by step instructions for creating a partition on my external hard drive that I could use to boot my computer in the event of an emergency? I understand how to use Backup for my files, but I want to know how to make the hard drive bootable, as well.
Thanks!
Eli Garfinkel

When you say step by step I'm guessing you're saying you are a little inexpierenced so I'm going to give it to you very thoroughly.
First: If you are not using this external HD for anything else then there is no need to partition and you should skip to "Making Bootable Clone"
"Making the Partition":
1) Plug in the external HD.
2) Launch Disk Utility
3) Click on the ext. HD in the left hand column
4) Click on the Partitions tab.
5) Create the number of partitions by clicking the dropped down menu under "Volume Scheme"
5a) The partition that will be the bootable one should be as big as the internal HD.
6) Format it as Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)
7) Check the Mac OS 9 Drivers...just in case.
8) Click the Partition button in the bottom right and let DU do its work.
"Making Bootable Clone"
-I highly recommend you buy the $27.95 copy a SuperDuper! (shirtpocket.com)
-It will allow for easy incremental backups, which can be done each day, that will keep you up-to-date.
1) Once you've downloaded SuperDuper! & have the disk partitioned open SuperDuper!
2) In the "Copy" box select your internal HD.
3) In the "to" box select the partition.
4) Make sure "using" says "backup-all files"
5) Select "Options" button and under the "During Copy" make chose the first option. This erases the partition and then copies the internal onto the external.
-After this is completed you can continue to do this, daily. The only difference is you'll have to change the "During Copy" in the "Options" button to the second option. This is the "Smart Update".
-A Smart Update will delete or create files on the ext. HD so it mirrors the internal. The results is the ext. HD is exactly like the internal and it only takes 10-15min. You ext. HD will always be up to date then. You can run this every night.
-This will result in an exact clone and you can boot form this partition if you ever need to.

Similar Messages

How do I create an External Hard Drive iPhoto Library

How do I create an external Hard Drive iPhoto Library? Will it remember faces and places, and the camera settings? I have over 20k photos. Most pictures are already stored in files on my external hd, but everytime I need to edit, I need to import the pics back into iPhoto. Is there an option for "editing software" outside of iPhoto? I do not want to store pictures on my computer, but I do like the "faces" feature! Please help!

Sure it can be UnDone in the same way it was done. By Copying the iPhoto library back to the original location or any other location on your internal drive and then Repointing iPhoto to use that Library as you did when you moved it to the external.
Have no idea about the thumbnails being blurry as I only use iPhoto for testing and helping others. I find iPhoto lacking in many ways and I already own Adobe Lightroom so I use that on my Mac.
I wouldn't think the thumbnails wouldn't be any different. They are the same files and even if the external is slower the Thumbnails should display the same way not differently.
I also do not allow any of the "i" programs, Photo & Tunes, to Copy my image or music files into their folder structure. I have them set to Leave the Files where they are, as I copy them to my hard drive where I want them Not where Photo and Tunes want to put them, and then just create a Library Database of them. So if I wanted to I could have just the actual image files on an External drive and then have iPhoto just create a Library database reference to them.
One Note though.
If you move the Library, including the actual image files, to an external and then start iPhoto without that external connected iPhoto will then Create another Library in the normal Default location that is blank and then you will need to point it to your original that is on the external once you reconnect that external.
That is one reason I don't care for iPhoto. Apple has made it fairly easy for novice users, placing everything in their User folder but IMHO that is not always the best way to do things.
Also at any point in time, even with the external connected, iPhoto will lose that association to the external Library and create another in the original Default location. Which will look like all your images are missing.
colleen747 wrote:
Thank you for responding. I understand. After reading quite a bit about this procedure, can it be undone? So many out there have stated that everything slows way down and the thumbnails are blurry. What is your opinion?
Do I first create a New File on the EHD and name it "iPhoto Library"? Then paste?
Most pictures are in folders on my EHD, how do I move them to the new library?
Thanks!

How do I make a bootable hard drive clone of my main disk in my mac pro?

Hi everyone,
How do I make a bootable hard drive clone of my main disk in my mac pro?
My main drive has bad sectors and I want to replace it.
Thanks in advance

Also your Mac's Disk Utility can make a bootable clone;
http://macs.about.com/od/backupsarchives/ss/diskbackup.htm
Consider though, if your internal HD is failing and defective, then any clone however made, may carry that defect.
Perhaps it would be better to copy your personal data, photos emails etc, to an external drive as well, just in case the clone did not work because of the failing hard drive.

How do I create a bootable USB Drive to install Windows 7 on a MBP Retina

I'm trying to install Windows 7 on a MBP Retina.(I'm running Mountain Lion) I followed BootCamp's directions to create a bootable copy of Windows on a USB Flash Drive. When I go to install, Boot Camp creates the partition, but I get a Windows black screen that says that "there is no bootable drive - hit any key". I have to force shut down, because hitting any key does nothing. I tried the Bootcamp directions at least 3 times, but have been unable to get the USB Drive to start up the Install program. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Joe

Disconnect all external drives. Only have the the USB flash drive connected.

How do I create a bootable Snow Leopard partition on my iMac running Lion?

Hi.
I have recently bought an iMac running Lion. I also have software such as Office 2004 and CS2 which I believe I can run using Rosetta, however I think I need Snow Leopard for this. If I purchase Snow Leopard from the Online Store, how do I install this 2nd OS within another partition on my iMac (yet to be created) and how do I switch between Snow Leopard and Lion on start up? Will my Lion software and data remain intact as I don't have any Lion disks should I need to reload this? Can anyone help with a step-by-step instructions as I'm not incredibly confident with the repartitioning of my nice new iMac?

To resize the drive do the following:
1. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
After the main menu appears select Disk Utility and click on the Continue button. Select the hard drive's main entry then click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
2. You should see the graphical sizing window showing the existing partitions. A portion may appear as a blue rectangle representing the used space on a partition.
3. In the lower right corner of the sizing rectangle for each partition is a resizing gadget. Select it with the mouse and move the bottom of the rectangle upwards until you have reduced the existing partition enough to create the desired new volume's size. The space below the resized partition will appear gray. Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed. (Note: You can only make a partition smaller in order to create new free space.)
4. Click on the [+] button below the sizing window to add a new partition in the gray space you freed up. Give the new volume a name, if you wish, then click on the Apply button. Wait until the process has completed.
You should now have a new volume on the drive.
It would be wise to have a backup of your current system as resizing is not necessarily free of risk for data loss. Your drive must have sufficient contiguous free space for this process to work.
Boot From The Snow Leopard Installer Disc and Install:
Insert OS X Installer Disc into the optical drive.
Restart the computer.
Immediately after the chime press and hold down the "C" key.
Release the key when the spinning gear below the dark gray Apple logo appears.
Wait for installer to finish loading.
Install Snow Leopard on the newly created partition.

How does one take out a hard drive partition on a MacBook Pro?

I have a MacBook Pro that has been configured with a partition so that my Mac can run Windows. I haven't used Windows since I got the computer -- I'm a Windows-convert and when I got the Mac, I thought I might still need Windows. BUT since I'm not using Windows at all these days and would like to regain that space on my hard drive, I want to know how to take out the partition so that the drive will just be one complete one.
I wanted to take the partition before I installed Leopard and I thought the installation would include a way to do this, BUT I guess not because it didn't work.
I realize that my taking out the partition will likely mean that I will have to reload everything... but I need first to know how to do it. Any instructions?

*Hi LGSue, Welcome* to Apple's Users Help Users Forums.
I hope you are aware that repartitioning will erase everything. It is best if you have a full clone on a FWH. You tell us nothing about your back up status.
I concur w do this before Leopard so you have a fallback. Doing a Combo Update to 10.4.10 in the process would leave you with the stable 10.4.10 and a fallback if Leopard proves buggy or unhappy with any of your apps.
Not often I differ from Niel.

Create a new bootable hard drive with XP - without CD reader

All,
   Since couple of years my Satellite CD reader is dead. Most probably an hardware failure, the CDs are spinning but that's all ... unbale to read them at all.
As the PC is getting slower and slower, I decided to refomat and re_image it.
    As I can't use the CD reader, I have to create the bootable hard drive (with the XP-Home edition provided when I bought the laptop) using another machine (A DELL or a Toshiba Portege I have also at home).
    For that I remove the hard drive fro, the satellite and put it in the other machine, and then reinstall windows ont it.
Everything went fine, untilI plug back the satellite hard drive to its original host (Satellite machine.
It refuse to boot and stop just after loading the MUP.Sys drivers (classique as the hardware is diffrent)
   My questions are :
   1. Any way I can create a proper bootable drive for Satellite 5105-S501 in such conditions (any place I can download an image for it)
   2. I can' enter the BIOS (ESC key do not let me in, F1 and F12 same ...). Any way to force to enter in the BIOS
   ESC key just show me the message : Type F1 for default :_°
Thanks
P.

Malcolm:
Thanks so much for replying to my question! I am new to MAC and have Tiger and Windows XP on separate drives. I will be removing the drive with Tiger and putting in a new drive to load Leopard and I wondered how that would effect accessing Windows XP since the Windows drive will remain in the system. Is there anything I need to do with bootcamp, since Windows was loaded using the Beta version of bootcamp, and bootcamp icon currently shows in the Windows XP taskbar. Tiger was pre-loaded when the computer was purchased. In fact I had to backdate the beta bootcamp version in order to get it to work. I hope this is not asking too much, but I wondered if there would any problem with Windows after the Leopard load.
THANKS IN ADVANCE!!

With lion how to create a bootable flash drive?

with lion how do I create a bootable flash drive?

With an utility such as Carbon Copy Cloner.
(63008)

How do i create a usb boot drive for OS X Lion 10.7.5

How do I create a bootable USB drive on a working iMac with OS X Lion 10.7.5? I'm fairly new to the MAC world...

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
If you want to create a bootable USB drive with the Mountain Lion installer, follow these steps:
1. Open App Store > Purchases, and download OS X Lion.
2. After downloading Lion, close the Lion installer and use Lion Diskmaker to create a bootable Mountain Lion flash drive > http://blog.gete.net/lion-diskmaker-us/
When you want to start from this OS X Mountain Lion USB drive, press Option key while your Mac is starting and select the USB drive

How to Create a Bootable Flash Drive to do a clean install of Lion. I have tried to use the InstallESD.dmg but it still will not do a clean install so that I do not have to do a reinstall from the Recovery (That just re downloads and takes over 6 hours)?

How to Create a Bootable Flash Drive to do a clean install of Lion. I have tried to use the InstallESD.dmg but it still will not do a clean install so that I do not have to do a reinstall from the Recovery (That just re downloads and takes over 6 hours)?
The system I'm have is a Mac-mini that had SL on it and no SuperDrive. I have also call Apple Support and they have really have not been to much help over 1st did my up grade to Lion and Installed the Lion Server.... it lost my SSL that I paid for and kill almost on of my server setting, plus kill all my web servers (using apache vhosts), and not to say the LDAP will even let remote users login to your laptops.
PS: There is no way that I'm going to buy a Install USB from Apple... They have over billed me over $300.00 because the Apps Store still has bugs (Glad I did not write that App/Service)
If there is anyone that can give in the information to create a USB install stick, I would be very thinkful.

Here you are bro, courtesy of "softpedia.com"....brilliant site!!!
If you ever had problems with your Mac OS X installation you know that the first thing you should do is to check the startup volume using Disk Utility.
After the check has ended and, if the errors exceed a certain level of seriousness, the Disk Utility application will require you to restart your Mac and use its Mac OS X Install disc counterpart.
Other users may have to reinstall OS X altogether, but will find, or already know, that their SuperDrive (a CD/DVD reader and write combo drive) is not functioning properly and it will not be able to read the Install disc.
Although this might happen to Mac OS X Leopard users due to faultyhardware, the vast majority of problematic SuperDrives will be encountered inside Snow Leopard running Macs.
This is due to the updated SuperDrive firmware included in either the Install disc or the software updates one has to install to reach the latest version of OS X, namely 10.6.6.
This can be fixed by flashing the SuperDrive’s stock firmware using free command line tools that one can find for free online (I will write about this process also, but at a later time because this article only focuses on allowing you to create your own alternative USB boot disc).
If you are reading this last bit of information with skepticism, than you should know that it happened to me too. Despite all my tries to make it work properly, the SuperDrive kept on munching any inserted DVDs and just popped them out in about twenty seconds.
The workaround to this issue was to create my own Leopard bootable USB memory stick. I am not suggesting a Snow Leopard bootable stick mainly because there are lots of users that have decided to buy the cheaper, Upgrade version, which I have not tested and, therefore, I’m not sure if it will work properly once written to a USB disk.
And now, here are the exact steps you should follow in order to obtain a fully bootable Leopard (or Lion) Install disc.
Step 1 (If you already have the Leopard install disc DMG file you can skip to Step 2)
Launch Disk Utility (you can find it inside /Applications/Utilities). Here select the Leopard Install disc in the list of drives on the left and click on the New Image menu entry at the top of the window. A save message will appear where you will have to select the Desktop as a destination.
Step 2
After Disk Utility has finished creating the Leopard DMG, insert your USB stick and erase all data and reformat the disk. To do this select the USB in the list of drives on the left and, after clicking on the Erase tab on the right side of the window, choose the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format and click the Erase button beneath.
Step 3
After the USB has been reformatted, download the SuperDuper app from HERE and launch it. Once SuperDuper starts, you will only have to select the DMG in the Copy drop-down menu, your USB memory stick on the right and hit the “Copy Now” button.
One can also use Disk Utility for this task but creating a bootable USB stick failed 2 out 4 times when copying the DMG to the stick (with the exact same settings each time). Creating the bootable stick using SuperDuper proved to be the perfect way to do it because it worked each of the 4 times I tested it.
The steps above can also be used to create a bootable Mac OS X Lion USB by using the InstallESD.dmg image you can find inside the Lion installer (named “Install Mac OS X Lion.app”) downloaded from the Mac App Store in the /Applications folder.
To locate the InstallESD.dmg right click the Lion installer, select the “Show Package Contents” entry, go inside the “Contents” folder, and from there into the “SharedSupport” folder. Inside this folder you can find the InstallESD.dmg you can use to create your own bootable Mac OS X Lion USB stick. To do so, go to the third step described above and use the InstallESD.dmg as the DMG to be copied to your USB disc.
That’s it! Once the process ends you will have a fully bootable Leopard (or Lion) USB disk that you can use as an alternative to the Apple’s DVD Install disc that comes bundled with all Macs.
To use your newly created bootable disk you will have to restart the Mac, press and hold the OPTION key until the StartupManager appears. Here, select the Mac OS X Install disk using your keyboard arrows and press return to start from the selected drive.

How can i create a bootable usb sata for xp

how can i create a bootable usb sata for xp

Installing Windows XP on a portable USB hard drive is not supported.
Carey Frisch

How do I create a bootable snapshot image of Lion?

How do I create a bootable snapshot image of Lion? In the past, I used disk utilities - restore to create a copy of current hard drive on an external drive. If there was a problem, kids could boot to external and work until internal drive was fixed. This proved to be a great solution. On a new Macbook Pro with Lion, I get an error when I try. It says to do a restore from the recovery disk, but the recovery disk says it is a limited function OSX. I would like a full OSX so they can continue to work and even copy files over if the internal disk is suffering intermittent failures enough not to boot but not enough to keep from copying files. A few years ago one of the kids had a disk/boot failure duing finals but was able to boot from the external hard drive, copy over what he needed and access the internet so that he could finish the exams. Time machine is great, but there are instances where you need a quick fix to keep going until the new hard drive arrives.

I do not run Windows, so I have no idea how to handle that type of situation.
But, just to be clear: disregarding Windows, the recovery option downloads the OS and installs it. Technically, that is not a clone unless you copy the installer and create a bootable OS with it. A clone is an exact copy of your system including all your apps, user settings, files, etc, etc and will exist on an external hard drive in addition to your system on your internal - that is done with CCC or SuperDuper.
And, a GUID partition is created in Disk Utility > click on the drive > choose Partition > choose a layout other than what you now have > there will be a clickable Options button below. Click on that and you can choose GUID. Note: partitioning your drive will erase everything on it.

External bootable hard drive

Since updraging to OS 10.8, I have lost the use of about $1000 worth of applications. I recently heard that some ppeople have solved thic problem by loading those apps on an external bootable hard drive and usin g the apps from there.
Can some point me to clear instruction on how to create an external bootable hard drive?

As Linc's answer suggests, you can't just install the applications on the external drive, you'll need to install Snow Leopard first, then install the applications. It is a good solution for those of us who own a computer that can still run Snow Leopard and don't want to replace all the older software all at once.
Just keep in mind that unless you stock up on older Macs now (and a few people have!) the next new computer you buy won't run Snow Leopard so the software piper will be paid eventually.

How do I order a new hard drive 655-1402A or 661-6610?

How do I order a new hard drive 655-1402A or 661-6610?

For a new hard drive try Newegg.com http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=380&name=Laptop-Hard-Dr ives&Order=PRICE
Or OWC for regular hard drives and SSDs http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/
Here are instructions on replacing the hard drive in a MacBook with a removable battery. http://creativemac.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=45088
Here are video instructions on replacing the hard drive on the Aluminum Unibody
http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/macbook_13_unibody/
Here are video instructions on replacing the hard drive on the White Unibody http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/macbook_13_09_unibody_hd/
To transfer your current hard drive I like the free application SuperDuper. It makes a bootable copy of everything on your hard drive http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html You'll need a cheap SATA external hard drive case. Put the new drive in the case then format and partition the new drive and clone your old drive to the new one. Check that it's set up right by booting up from the external drive. Then replace your old hard drive with the new one and put your old one in the external case.
Here's a cheap SATA external hard drive case on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-NexStar-2-5-Inch-External-Enclosure/dp/B002JQNXZC/r ef=pd_cp_pc_0

I have iMovie 09. I just erased my external hard drive, but it is still formatted for the mac. However, iMovie will not recognize the hard drive. It shows the only hard drive available is the computers. How do I get the external hard drive to show up?

I have iMovie 09. I just erased my external hard drive, but it is still formatted for the mac. However, iMovie will not recognize the hard drive. It shows the only hard drive available is the computers. How do I get the external hard drive to show up?

In Finder's Menu, select Go menu>Go to Folder, and go to "/volumes". (no quotes)
Volumes is where an alias to your hard drive ("/" at boot) is placed at startup, and where all the "mount points" for auxiliary drives are created for you to access them. This folder is normally hidden from view.
Drives with an extra 1 on the end have a side-effect of mounting a drive with the same name as the system already think exists. Try trashing the duplicates with a 1 or 2 if there are no real files in them, and reboot.
If it does contain data...
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2474

How do I create a bootable hard drive partition?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for