Installing on External Firewire Drive

Hi-
My Mac has started doing some funny things recently; I cant connect any USB devices, MobileMe refuses to let me delete any items from my iCal and other little irritations.
I have an external 4Tb Firewire Drive which has loads of space on it free, so I want to do a complete re-install of OS X and boot from from the external drive. I can then reinstall my apps and stuff bit by bit and see what is causing the problems.
The question is: when I install the system onto the FW drive, will it erase what is already on there? I have some important work on it and don’t want to lose it! Does the installer need a ‘clean’ disc to install?
Thanks, Andy

Disk utility's Restore function (and other copying apps such as CCC) will make a bootable installation of Snow Leopard on an external firewire drive that already contains data. Just remember not to check the erase disk option for the firewire drive.
It's most convenient if you first collect all your user material on the firewire drive into one folder. And there is possibly a risk of something bad happening if some files in your user material have names identical to the names of files in the Snow Leopard installation. That may be unlikely. But you'll have to judge that.
If that worries you, before you do the Snow Leopard installation on your firewire drive, you can use disk utility to repartition your external drive without erasing any of its data. See this: http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1395749. With such a large firewire drive, a number of partitions would seem desirable.
Then you can install a bootable Snow Leopard on an empty partition of the firewire drive for which you do check the erase disk option. With that option checked, the copy is performed as a block by block copy. Otherwise it's performed as a file by file copy. The block by block copy goes faster and is supposed to be identical in all respects to the original. That's not so with the file by file copy -- though both provide equal functionality.
Your firewire drive should be partitioned GUID. You can use APM (and the copy will still be bootable) but you will not be able (I've read) to install Snow Leopard updates. You can't, alas, change the partitioning scheme without erasing your firewire drive.
Message was edited by: Roy Vincent
Message was edited by: Roy Vincent

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Blue Screen Result When Installing To External Firewire Drive

I can't afford to have problems with programs not running on Leopard on my 17" G4 1.67 GHz 2 GB RAM PowerBook so I am trying to install it on an external Firewire drive. I was hoping to test out Leopard with certain applications by running it from the external drive.
The Firewire drive has two partitions, one has my backup clone of the PowerBook and the other just has files and about 35 GB of free space. The installation would be a new installation so none of the files that deal with login or Application Enhancer that are being talked about in other threads are an issue.
My first attempt to install brought up a blue screen after the installation restart. I left it there for about 30 minutes then powered off the PowerBook by holding down the power button. I started it again and held down the option key, picked the install disk as startup, went through the disk utility repair disk (found no problems). After that I picked the new install on the external from the startup preferences and it simply restarted to a blue screen. I left that one for about 20 minutes then powered down.
I went back to the Powerbook Tiger OS system, deleted all the installed folders on the external and tried a completely new install. Once again it went to the blue screen after the Leopard install restart. This time I left it overnight and this morning the display was dark and upon waking it up with a tap of the space bar was greeted by the bluescreen again.
I talked to my Apple hardware rep who knows the equipment that I am working with and we talked about all the steps I went through and he has no explanation why it won't work on the external.
I would love to hear from anyone that may have insight for this particular external FW drive installation perspective.

Joe-
Is the drive partitioned to APM? (Sorry I took Anton's reply to be yours.) What was the type fo partitioning onthe disk with the success? I am not knowledgable enough in those error messages on the system.log file, but one thought is - after the memory upgrade, did you clear the PRAM (long shot, but do it anyway)? The machine booting on one external Firewire drive (#2) implies the problem is with the external FW disk (#1) you are using. Some other people had the bus error, but with Time Machine. (Not to go on a tangent, but TM seems to have problems when the disk name has non-alphanumeric in it.)
Hoping someone who knows the syslog errors and the boot sequence will pipe in here.

Application install onto external Firewire drive

hi,
I have an external firewire drive and was wondering why I cannot install some applications to this drive. I would like to do this to keep the main disk as free as possible.
Some apps don't seem to care where they are installed and some do, so there must be some way to do this. And this is place to get that answer!!
Thanks in advance!!
BCA

Oops. I meant Alias instead of link.
Create a directory on the external called Applications then select it and choose File -> Make Alias in the finder. Replace the Applications folder on your main drive with the alias you just created (this might require admin rights) and then the Applications directory will always reference the directory on the firewire drive.
You probably want to move the contents of the original Applications folder to the firewire drive before replacing it with the alias or you'll have to reinstall.

Can I install OS 9 on an external Firewire drive?

I am not sure if this belongs in the G5 thread or the Leopard thread. Anyway:
I have a Mac G5, running Leopard 10.5.4.
I understand that Leopard will not run Classic applications.
*However, can I install OS 9 on an external Firewire drive? And just boot directly from that drive?*
I have essential OS 9 apps that I really need to keep.
I am aware of Classic emulators that run under Leopard, but that is not an option.
Any advice, insights, suggestions, et cetera in this matter will be appreciated!

+PS I should have added for the sake of others reading this thread…+
You, Dunestrider, can run your Mac in Tiger (and hence in Classic) because, AFAIK, your G5 originally shipped with Tiger.
Others should be aware that you cannot boot a Mac with an OS earlier than the one with which it shipped, i.e. if your Mac shipped with Leopard you cannot do what I suggested in my previous post. See this Apple doc.
Also, Dunestrider, I just realised belatedly that you won't have to buy Tiger - you will still have the original Install disk(s) that came with the G5.
Andreas

Trouble with installing 10.5 from an external firewire drive

I have a family pack of 10.5 and installed it just fine on my macbook. But, I'm having trouble getting my imac DVD player to read the DVD. It just spins and spits it out, and spins and spits it out. The imac is not covered under applecare so spending money to get the DVD drive fixed (which I barely use) is not something I want to do right now.
Anyway, I followed instructions on a this website to install 10.5 from an external firewire drive. (http://iuseapple.com/blog/apple-how-to/advanced-os-x/2007/10/29/how-to-install-l eopard-from-external-firewire-hard-drive/)
But I get stuck and am not able to actually get my imac to boot from the installer. Basically, I am able to use disk utility to create a copy of the disk image on my macbook. That resulting file ends in ".cdr" and it mounts when I double click it.
And I partitioned my firewire hard drive without problems.
I think I'm messing up when it comes to doing the restore. If I try to drag the .dmg mounted file in to the "source" it doesn't work (is greyed out). If I try to drag the mounted .dmg there than it works, but I get an error when I click "restore" (something about scans and images not being found). I tried physically copying the .dmg file onto the partition, but then when I plugged the HD into my imac, I wasn't able to get the imac to boot from the installer.
What am I doing wrong? If someone could walk me through these last steps I'd appreciate it!

Okay I finally got around to creating the bootable disk image of 10.5 using Carbon Copy Cloner. Still my iMac is not booting from the firewire drive!
Here's a recap of everything I've tried. I'm at a complete loss now!
- I partitioned the HD into 2 partitions-- a 10gig one for the 10.5 install, the then the rest for Time Machine. I make the partition in Disk Utility on my MacBook.
- I've partitioned the drive a few times-- always partitioning it in APM format (b/c it needs to boot my non-intel iMac).
- I've created the disk image using "restore" in disk utility. I've again tried this a few times.
- I am able to boot my MacBook from the disk image I create! So I know the FW drive is able to be used to boot from!
- Here's what I've tried in terms of getting the iMac to boot from the FW drive. It always just boots to my internal drive instead. Sometimes I briefly see a folder and question mark. I've tried all 3 FW ports. I've selected the install partition at start up in preferences. I've also held down the option key at start up (only my internal drive shows) and I've held down command-option-shift-delete and again I get the question mark and it boots to my internal drive.
- And I installed Carbon Copy Cloner and made the disk image that way on my macbook. Still, I tried everything and the iMac is not able to boot from the firewire drive!
Since my DVD drive is broken, this is the only way for me to install 10.5! Help!

External Firewire drive does not mount on desktop now.

Greetings everyone.
G5 dual, 4.6GB ram, OSX 10.4.10, external firewire drive, formerly worked fine, now is invisible.
Not the drive. New purchase, worked fine until a restart. Not the cable. Power is getting from the G5 to the firewire drive. Not the port. I also have a firewire card instlaled so I have three ports to connect it to (and two on the FW drive). No combination works. Not the computer, the FW drive also fails to appear on an iBook. Not the OS. I did a clean install to make sure.
I'm not a newbie. I know what I'm doing. Until now! DiskWarrior, TechTool Pro, Drive Genius and Apple's Disk Utility cannot see the drive.
The FW drive is a Powerbook internal HD inserted into a case, purchased seperately.
At my wits' end. Can anyone help please.

I am suddenly having this EXACT problem. I have two Firelite firewire drives (one 60G and one 80G) that are suddenly refusing to mount on my older dual 1.25GHz G4 tower. They are also suddenly refusing to mount on my non-intel iMac. They will both mount painlessly on my new Intel MacBook Pro, but that's not much use, since the point of the firewire drives is to transfer files between these computers. I'm updating all of them to 10.4.10 to see if that's the issue...

How do i install an external hard drive to my powerbook G4?

how do i install an external hard drive to my powerbook G4?

Buy an external FireWire drive (and FireWire cable if you don't have a spare or the drive doesn't come with one). Then, just plug it in. Not much for installing.
If you mean replacing your internal drive, that's another matter entirely.

How do I back up my Boot Camp partition to external firewire drive?

I have a 15 GB Windows XP Boot Camp partition (FAT32). I want to back it up to a 120 GB external Firewire drive. (I know the backup won't be bootable). In OX X Disk Utility, I formatted the external drive as MS-DOS (FAT). I planned to do the backup using the Windows Backup utility.
However, when booted into WinXP, Windows will not recognize the external hard drive. I thought I might need to create a FAT32 partion of 32 GB or less on the external drive, but I apparently can't do this in OS X or Windows (since Windows doesn't recognize the drive).
Any suggestions on how to backup the Boot Camp partition will be appreciated. I'm mainly interested in preserving all programs and data. Ideally, a clone could be created that could be restored back to the original partition in bootable form, but from studying this and other forums, it dosn't seem to be easy to do this for a FAT32-formatted volume.

My goal was to create a bootable clone of my FAT32 Boot Camp partition, while at the same time increasing the size of the partition from 15 GB to 32 GB if possible. This is what I did:
1. As suggested in this thread, I used Disk Utility to create a disk image. I formatted it as MS-DOS (FAT), and made it 32 GB in size.
2. Used the Finder to copy all files from my 15 GB Windows XP partition to the new disk image.
The following steps were only to determine if the disk image is a viable backup:
3. Removed the internal hard drive with my original Win XP partition, and installed a new internal hard drive.
4. Used Boot Camp Assistant to create a 32 GB Boot Camp partition on the new internal drive.
5. Inserted my Win XP installation disk and started the Windows installation. Formatted the new partition as FAT32. (I used the long rather than the quick format method--not sure if this was necessary.)
6. Continued the Windows installation to the point of restarting the computer, at which time I used the Option key to boot back into OS X.
7. Used the Finder to copy all the files from the 32 GB disk image to the new Boot Camp partition. (This overwrote a few Windows files installed by the aborted Win XP installation.)
8. Restarted and used the Option key to select the new 32 GB Boot Camp Partition. Windows booted as usual with all files, programs, etc. from the original 15 GB partition. Windows did complain about "new hardware" and required a restart, but all appears normal.
This indicates that the disk image containing all the files from my original Boot Camp partition is a viable backup, and can be used to restore the partition if necessary. I'm not sure if formatting the disk image as MS-DOS (rather than Mac OS extended) was necessary, or not.

Can WinXP be loaded and booted from external firewire drive?

The subject line probably says it all but:
Does the recent firmware upgrade and/or BootCamp allow you to install WinXP on an external Firewire drive rather than partitioning the iMac Core Duo's internal drive?
Mike
Intel iMac Mac OS X (10.4.6)

The other problem is XP itself doesn't support booting from firewire. Even if someone could figure out how to install to an external from bootcamp, you would still have to contend with XP.
Glor

External Firewire Drives Don't Mount.... i need a guru.

Warning!!!!!
i'm going to ramble....
2 much sake .. heh heh
i just got a brand butt spanking new iBook G4 14" 1.42 GHz
Tiger pre-installed.
I ran Software Update. As you can tell by my info, i'm at 10.4.2 now.
In a minute i'll tell ya how i got BACK to 10.4.2 from 10.4.5
When i got my iBook I didn't plug my external firewire drives in until (about 2 days) after my update. So when i did get around to building my iTunes library, well, no luck.
My firewire drives would and do NOT mount!
By the way these particular peripherals are Western Digital firewire
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/stdadp.php?p_faqid=694&pcreated=1036793224
and AcomData Combo USB 2.0/Firewire
http://www.acomdata.com/hdp/fs.html
drives.
With a little exploration you'll find (at least i did) that they do not have firmware or driver updates for Mac. ( if you find them i'll give ya praise!)
The AcomData drive mounts with USB but not with firewire. The thing that
creeps me out is that my 3rd Gen firewire enabled iPod mounts right up no prob!
Another thing that ties me in knots is that these drives WILL MOUNT on my iBook12" running 10.3.9, as well as my old 5cH00L iMac DV 10.3.9!!!!
I thought it might be the Update so i did a clean install with the dvd provided by Apple and now i'm back to 10.4.2 but still no luck.
I've tried repairing permissions, starting, restarting, rebooting, plugging, unplugging, Updating, Downgrading, standing on my bloody head, looking all over the dotcom.
i swear i did all this with my peripherals unplugged.
i caught wind that though these companies may not provide updates for Mac, if i were to find out the companies that make the "chipsets?" within these drives that i might have luck.
i can't figure out what kind of "chipsets" (Oxford?) are in these drives or what to do if i knew anyway!
exhale
i still believe i have the best machine on the planet right now but .......
i need a guru.
help.
much obliged,
Clive
 G4 iBooks. iMac DV (graphite). gen 2,3,5 iPods Linux on the Pod too! Mac OS X (10.4.2)

Hi, Clive.
Here is some general troubleshooting advice that may help:
(1) Review the AppleCare Knowledge Base document "What to do if your computer won't recognize a FireWire device".
(2) If this problem occurred after installing a recent Mac OS X Update, and you are also unable to mount CDs, DVDs, or disk images perform the steps in this Mac OS X Hints article.
(3) The following additional steps will often help resolve problems with FireWire devices, particularly hard drives:(a) Power-on the FireWire drive before starting up (booting) your Mac.
(b) Reset PRAM and NVRAM.
(c) Reset the PMU or SMU: In the case of your iBook, I believe the article you want is "Resetting PowerBook and iBook Power Management Unit (PMU)." You can also check the manual that came with your new iBook.
(d) Try a different FireWire port. James Wiebe, CEO of WiebeTech, has published FireWire Port Failures in Host Computers and Peripheral Devices, a white paper providing backgroud information and technical analysis concerning the causes of failure for FireWire ports. This may provide additional diagnostic information.Note that some of the information above is from the "FireWire Problems" chapter of my book, Troubleshooting Mac® OS X.
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Boot from external Firewire Drive-cannot repair or optimize internal drive.

Hi all
Connected my new 300 GB Seagate External Firewire Hard Drive today.
Installed Tiger from DVD. Updated to 10.4.3.
Installed Tech Tool Pro 4. Updated to 4.1.1.
Booted from External Firewire Drive.
Disk Utility cannot Verify or Repair internal drive. Does not say or do anything.
Tech Tool Pro cannot repair volume or optimize. Says, "Cannot Unmount Volume."
Is there a fix for this?
Thank you for the help!
Jeff
eMac 800 nVidia. Mac OS X (10.4.3) 160 GB Internal HD. Pioneer Superdrive. 1 GB RAM.

Hi
I did name the new external completely different from the internal.
After booting from the external Firewire Hard Drive, I tried running Disk Utility and Tech Tool Pro from both drives. No matter which drive I run the Utilities from the same things happen every time...
Nothing happens when trying to use Disk Utility to Verify Volume on internal eMac Drive.
Tech Tool Pro says, "Cannot unmount volume" when trying to check Volume or Optimize internal drive.

Tiger doesn't install on external firewire disk (partition)

hi, i've got a Lacie Porche 250GB firewire drive, partitioned in two parts, and i want to install tiger on the first 50GB partition, but the installer give me an error about the destination: "You cannot install Mac OS X on this volume. Mac OS X cannot start up from this volume."
i'm trying to do this with an ibook G4 and the standard Tiger DVD Install.
the external firewire disk is formatted in HFS+
please help me
iMac Intel\iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

A boot disk for the Intel Macs needs to have a GUID Partition Table, the G4 needs the "Apple Partition Map". If you formatted the drive on your Intel Mac, you may need to repartition for the G4. In the "Partition" tab in Disk Utility, use the "Options..." button to choose the partitioning. Backup any data on the drive that you need, first.

External Firewire Drive Will Not Boot with 10.5.1

I have a Intel Mac Mini and I tried to install Leopard onto a external Firewire Drive. I have done this with 10.4.11 and all works well. The Mac Mini is running 10.5.1 on it's internal drive. I attached the Ext FW drive 320 GB and formatted it using 'Disk Utility' GUID format. I next installed 10.5.0 on the Ext FW Drive. I can shutdown and reboot with 10.5.0 using the firewire drive as the booting drive. I next installed the 10.5.1 update and when it completes it requests a restart, I restart it and it never boots back up just the Grey-Apple screen.
I have left it sit for a long time in this 'trying-to-boot' mode for a longtime because I know 10.5.1 may restart more than once on initial install. but nothing. I have also tried partitioning the drive into 3 40-80-180GB drives, but still the same behavior.
Any suggestions?

Went through the motions on that. No positive results. I'm starting to suspect either the enclosure or one of the latest updates.
This what I have found to date.
The Enclosure " Vantec NexStar 3" extrenal USB 2.0 and Firewire. Model NST-360UF-BK
The Drive Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320 GB IDE Drive
I tried 10.5.0 on an Intel Mac Mini. (GUID format) It boots ok. Install 10.5.1 manually downloaded or automatic it will install the update but will no reboot.
(this part I have to verify a second time) tried the same enclosure on a G4 . I attached the drive formatted it for a PowerPC install and boot. Installed 10.4.10 but not the latest security updates, JAVA, and QT. It will boot ok from the external FW drive. I next install the latest Updates via the update app in the Systems Preference window. After doing the updates for 10.4.10 it will not boot.
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Macbook causes external firewire drive to operate constantly

I have a Macbook 1.83MHz with 2GB of RAM installed. Whenever I connect my 80GB LaCie external firewire drive, the drive commenses to do a rapid cycle as if I were copying a large file to it and does not stop for the duration of being attached to the computer. Searching through files on the hard drive is very slow, and if I click on a file in column view, the finder beachballs for several minutes while the info or preview is being generated. The drive is the only device in the chain and worked great with my previous machine, a dual 867MHz G4 mirror drive.
Any thoughts as to what might be going on? Thanks.

well, i attached my other firewire drive and it started doing the same thing, but i was able to add it to spotlight's "ignore" list and the problem went away. so this is probably the issue, but i can't make it stop on the original firewire drive because whenever i try to add it to spotlight's ignore list, the beachball spins for a few seconds then nothing shows up in the list.
checked firmware, everything up to date. next step is to reformat...
too bad spotlight doesn't default to NOT indexing everything you stick into the computer... (or at least dump indexing way back in the priority queue so it doesn't get in the way like this)

External Firewire Drives Incompatible with FW-Booting

Hi All,
I'm trying to install the EFI update, but I have an internal RAID, so I need to boot from a different drive. I've tried three different firewire drives, and the OS X installer won't let me install on any of them. Has anyone had success getting OS X Intel installed on an external firewire drive?

Is there any way to have a firewire drive with two
paritions, one intel bootable and one ppc bootable?
Connect the drive to a PPC Mac, partition it, and install PPC OSX on one partition. Move the drive to an Intel Mac that has OSX 10.4.9 installed, and copy that OSX to the other partition using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!
<http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html>
<http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html>

Installing on External Firewire Drive

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