Restore iMac from external dvd drive

I'm giving my iMac to a friend. But my superdrive is is failing to read the restore disks, but not after wiping the HD.
Now my G4 iMac wont do a thing.
I had assumed that my external DVD drive would do, but it stops on the small mac icon and goes no further.
Is there a work-around I can do? You'd be helping a retired photographer to leave his ancient PC and give my gorgeous G4 iMac a new home. While I get on with my iMac 20' intel.
The G4 last run on Tiger.

Put the Intel into Target Disk Mode with the G4's installer disc in the drive.
[How to use FireWire target disk mode|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58583] includes description of hardware and software requirements.
Boot the G4 while holding down the option key. If you're lucky the installer disc will appear as a boot option and you can reinstall the OS onto the G4's drive.
Oh, connect the two computers with a Firewire cable!

Similar Messages

Boot iMac from external DVD drive

Hi guys!
I need to boot my iMac to my system disc using an external DVD drive (USB).
I put the DVD in the drive and it shows up in Prefs as a bootable disc but when I select it and tell it to restart it gives me the error beep. I've tried rebooting and holding down "option" but the system disc in the external doesn't show up.
I'm on 10.3.9 on a 17" G5 iMac 1.8GHz. All ancient history I know but I really only use it for surfing the web and iTunes. I'm trying to upgrade to 10.5 but I need to get it to boot to the DVD drive using the original system disc first.
I've checked into firmware updates and done tons of searches but I can't see why this Mac won't boot from a USB drive. Am I missing something?
Thank you!!

Intel Macs can boot from USB external drives (including optical drives) just fine. It's the older PowerPC Macs that usually need external drives to be FireWire, in order for it to be bootable.
You may want to look at Mac-oriented vendor OWC to see what they have
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/optical-drives/

Ibook g3 M2453 boot from external DVD drive

Hi, I'm Simon from Germany.
I have an iBook M2453 Mac OS X and a lot of dvds.
But the iBook has no DVD drive. So I bought an external DVD drive. But no matter what I do during boot (press the C key or alt)
I can not boot from external DVD drive.
Please help me
Thank you.
Simon.
PS: I have translated the text using Google translate

Hi Simon,
the iBook is able to boot from USB, but this is not expected behaviour and not supported by Apple.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA20554
There are some external enclosures that do the trick.
But only when you press ALT after Power on. (Select a startup volume via the Startup Manager)
External enclosures with Prolific PL-3507 chipset (Firewire/USB Combo)
You will find them on Ebay Germany
I have a Delock IDE>USB 2.0 enclosure for 2,5" HDs
http://www.delock.com/produkte/gruppen/Geh%C3%A4use/Delock_25_external_enclosure _USB20_42365.html?setLanguage=EN
that works also.
Hallo Simon,
das läuft nur mit einigen wenigen externen Gehäusen. Such auf Ebay nach "PL-3507"
und nimm eins mit Firewire und USB Anschlüssen.
Ein Festplattengehäuse von Delock für 2,5" Festplatten ging auch ( Link oben)
Ein Boot ist nur möglich wenn du die ALT Taste nach dem Einschalten drückst und dann über den Startup manager dein Boot volume auswählst.

Restore Disc Will Not Boot From External DVD Drive

I am using an original MacBook Pro that I decided could use a good restore, and started to clean house. The optical drive is broken, so I am using an external USB drive. I inserted the restore disc that came with the computer (It has OS X 10.4.6 on it), erased my HD, and proceeded to install Tiger. However, setup froze while installing Photobooth, and I was forced to shut down the computer.
I'm trying to get my Macbook Pro to boot from the restore disc that came with it so I can try setup again, but it won't work. If I hold C during the boot, I get a flashing folder with a question mark over it. If I hold option, I get a cursor, but just a blank, gray screen. In both instances, the external DVD drive is active and reading the disc, but I'm not getting any results on the screen. I've also reset PRAM.
If I can just get my computer to boot from the disc, I should be able to get back on track. Thanks.

When I press option during boot, nothing happens. Just a gray screen and cursor, like I described above. I haven't been able to test the external drive yet on another mac to see if it is bootable because I can't find the other computer's boot disc at the moment, but I'll try later with something else.
I have been able to access the drive through Target Disk mode successfully though. Is there something in particular I should do with the files? The folders are:
Applications
cores
dev
etc
Library
OSInstall.mpkg.998YblbM
System
tmp
Users
var
Volumes

Satellite M30 - restore from external DVD Drive

Hi,
I have a Satellite Pro M30. There is a problem with the internal DVD Multi Drive - the replacement will take a month or so to get here. I need to perform a restore on this machine. I have connected an external DVD drive to the machine. When I boot up the machine boots from the recovery CD but then seems to be looking for a drive X. I get the following messages on the DOS screen:
Device Name : TOSCD001
Number of Units: 1
CDR101: Not ready reading drive X
Abort,Retry,Fail?
Please insert Recovery CD-ROM #1!
What should I be doing?
Regards,
Sameer

Hello Sammer
Unfortunately the recovery media is created to be used from internal drive only. I dont believe that you will be able to use it with external device. On recovery CD there is a ghost image and it is not easy to arrange it for usage with external device.

Hard drive replaced on imac how to restore data from external hard drive

Hard drive crashed, replaced by authorized dealer. Need to transfer all data from external hard drive to repaired computer.

http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/14.html
See especially C.

Installing from External DVD Drive

Can you install Leopard from an external DVD drive (USB)? I bought an external DVD drive and it has a faster speed then the built in DVD Drive in my iMac.
Thanks,
agent6998

I wanted to try this out and used my 10GB 3G ipod to install, and it actually went pretty fast. It took me ~45 minutes to install from boot to boot (not counting post-boot blue screen that took ~10 minutes or so, and then final setup tunings/customizations, etc.). The time saved equaled the time it took to copy the DVD to disk image, root around and find my old ipod, and restore the image to the ipod, so its not that much more efficient. Additionally, its an unsupported method of installing, so if something goes wrong dont blame Apple.

All users GONE except for "Other"...and CANNOT boot from External DVD drive

I booted the iMac (Intel...the last one with the White Bezel) tonight, and all of my users were GONE except for "Other." The internal Superdrive has had a disc jammed in it for months, so instead I have an OWC external USB/FW400/FW800 DVD drive. Snow Leaopard.
I need to boot from the SL install disc, but that must go into the external drive...which, as it's been since I upgraded to SL, the Mac sometimes sees and sometimes doesn't. Right now it can't see it. Which leaves me a big pile of crap, doesn't it?
So, what to do? I can't boot the internal drive because it's jammed with a DVD (or I spend $300 to replace what should be a $20 optical drive in it), I can't boot the external DVD drive because the iMac w/Snow Lepeord can't see it, and, meanwhile, all of my photos, etc., are on my Time Machine backup drive...which, as long as I can't do any of the above, just sits there...useless.
Can you tell I'm a bit frustrated with this?
I've reset the PRAM. I've rebooted. I've held down all sorts of combinations of keys. I've tried every single interface type on the external drive and the same thing - the drive can't be seen by the computer.
Has the internal hard drive failed? Nope. I'm tying this using the Firefox browser that's running on my Windows XP installation via Boot Camp on the internal hard drive.

Thanks, but no luck so far.
I have an old iMac G3 downstairs, and I connected it to the machine via Firewire. I could see the disk on the 24" iMac, its folders, etc. I wanted to see if I could install OS X via Target Disk Mode from the old machine to the new one, but it's a PowerPC machine and you can't do that. Maybe you can't do that from ANY iMac...I'm not that experienced.
Now the iMac isn't booting at all to Windows via Boot Camp - it's been booting for 45 minutes now with the "WinXP" logo, but nothing. I'm about to throw it in the car and haul it over to my parents, who have both a Powerbook and a 27" iMac. Maybe it'll work there. Who knows.
Other ideas...replace the internal hard drive (cheap)...if that doesn't work, I'll just sell the thing. I'm not going to sink $300 into the thing when I can get a new machine for around $600-$700. I may go to a Windows7 machine on the desktop and a Powerbook...maybe even an iPad.
I really want to love this iMac. It's my first (well, I did have the G3, but that was just to play with) Mac. It's given me a ton of problems since I bought it new. It's always been a "stock" machine - nothing weird done to it. I was hit with an iMovie update once, and that broke iMovie. Even the new iLife 2009 didn't fix it. Then, the internal optical disk drive failed. I couldn't believe that Apple used a proprietary optical drive rather than a stock Pioneer model. Price for the drive alone? $200.
I installed Snow Leopard 2 months ago, and that completely broke my ability to use external optical drives. Sometimes they work...most times they don't. This is an ongoing problem that many people are having (check the forums)...but no fix. Where does that leave me? With a useless computer.
So, I've boiled it down to this: I love the Mac software. I hate the hardware. Sure, it's pretty, but if something goes wrong, get ready to pay. I hate that Apple knows about problems, yet does nothing to address them, like the problem with external optical drives and Snow Leopard.
I bought the Mac because I was sick of Microsoft not being able to simply produce an OS full of security holes. Often times I read people bashing supposed "driver ****" with Windows, but look at what users of Windows machine are demanding of Microsoft - "please make my software compatible with the trillions of combinations of hardware that can run the os...all the way back to stuff that was created in the mid 1990s." Meanwhile, from my experience, Apple can't get their software to work with their own proprietary, supposedly vertically-controlled hardware.
Windows7 is a not bad OS. It's got it's faults, of course. But, if my optical drive failed in a Windows box, I'd have it replaced in 10 minutes...with a bluray drive...that can write...for under $100.
I use my computer for pictures, etc. In fact, we were ready to send off to iPhoto for our yearly photo books. That's not going to happen, as the photos are forever trapped on my Time Machine backup drive (lesson learned: dump photos to a generic format...fat32 works...just in case you decide to switch from Mac to Win7). iLife is great. MS Office is great, too, on the Mac. I love the little things the Mac does right.
After years of screwing around with my Windows box, I wanted a computer that acted like a consumer electronic device. That's not what I've gotten.
Ugh, so now do I buy a Mac Mini for $700, a new iMac for $1,400, or a Macbook Pro and a mac mini?
...or...do I continue to work within this silly Ubuntu Linux world?
Whatever the answer, I wish I didn't have to ask the question now.

Reinstalling osx tiger from external dvd drive

I bought a new imac 27. I want to give my old power PC to a friend in need and want to erase and reinstall operating system, however, the optical drive on the power PC does not work so I purchased an external DVD drive and trying to install disc from that. I get to the part of where it asks me to restart the computer, the computer restarts, and the same message is there again, restart the computer. I am stuck in a loop and not sure what to do.
I cant seem to erase all my info and re install the disc. any thoughts or ideas of what i might be doing wrong or what I can try?
Regards
DH

Boot while pressing the Option key, then select the DVD.

Installing Windows 7 from external DVD drive

I removed the internal DVD drive and replaced it with an OCW SSD on my 15" MBP. I used Disk Utility to format it to MS-DOS(FAT). I bought Windows 7 and downloaded the .iso file from the website. I used Disk Utility to burn the .iso image onto the disk. Since BootCamp won't recognize my external DVD drive I installed rEFIt, so after I restarted twice it came up with a prompt to boot from Windows install CD. I click the the icon, the screen goes black, and then the DVD drive stops spooling and I have to hold the power button down to restart it normally. What way is there to install WIndows 7 from an external DVD drive?

Maybe use Winclone (Mac app)? Others here know more about using Winclone than I do.
I use Casper (Windows app) for cloning an internal Windows partition to an external drive, so a Casper restore would be just the opposite, but requires a CD drive which you are now lacking.

Restoring itunes from external hard drive

-I used WD backup program to store itunes on external hard drive
-hard drive on mac pro crashed, replaced hard drive
-trying to restore itunes songsa from external drive and when I copied songs from external hard drive to new internal hard drive which has itunes program, only song titles appear and track number for songs I ripped from CDs. All info is present for songs I purchased from itunes (why is there a difference in the way these two are restored???)
-Can I restore itunes from external drive so that artist and album are associated with each song title I ripped from CDs?
Much appreciate all assistance. Thanks.

I know MP3 and AAC save tag data, and I believe AIFF does as well (if you want to keep them in full-quality but space-greedy format). I don't think WAV supports tagging which is why they were lost. Read:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9558241&#9558241
This time make sure you have a complete backup of your itunes folder (which, in fact you may still have). That way you can recover your complete library and everything intact (as long as you keep your backups up to date).
Here is a related topic
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9267109&#9267109

Problem booting from external DVD drive on Lenovo S10e

Hi,
I recently purchased a new Lenovo S10e ideapad, a few weeks prior to that I purchased an external DVD rewriter drive manufactured by LG, the drive works perfectly on every computer I try with the exception of the Lenovo ideapad S10e.
The thing is that the drive is being recognized and installed by the Windows XP Home Edition the S10e came with but when I try to boot a bootable CD using then drive on the S10e ideapad I almost alwasy fail to do so.
I set the S10e BIOS to have the USB CDROM as first boot device, in addition I used the F12 key to use the boot menu to choose the boot device, in 9 out 0f 10 atempts my external drive will not show in the boot menu and when choosing the enter setup option I see that the BIOS do not list it as the USB CDROM, instead it says "USB CDROM:" rather than have the drive name after it.
In the 1 time out of 10 it does work the BIOS seem to be identifying the drive and it shows in the boot menu, however I cannot work with it for a more than 1 minute without it stopped being recognized again.
The problem seems very strange to me as the drive works under the windows operating system and do not have any problem whatsoever on other computers, I have tested the external drive on my PC, another Mini Laptop from LG and a GIGABYTE Laptop (Normal one), all of which had no problems recognizing the external drive and booting from it.
I will really appreciate if I can get some help with the problem.
Thanks.

I've had a similar issue with X61 and the external DVD drive from Lenovo.
In my case, it was the power issue. On the back of the drive, there is a small table says that the drive needs a 3.0A 5V power input. One USB 2.0 port can only provide 0.5A. I don't know if the drive has any special, low power mode, but I suspect that even if it has, 0.5A is still not enough to fully power it. I've checked the current with the multimeter, and at peak times, the drive draws 550mA. Even then, it makes a stuttering sound for a few seconds, before finally spinning the DVD disk. I've also noticed that the DVD works most of the times when it's connected to the left USB port. That may be because of how the laptop's internal power circuicity is laid out (+separate USB host controller for each 'side' of the laptop). Another thing that seems to help is to disable all 5V driven devices that the laptop uses: the wifi card, bluetooth, any additional devices connected to the USB bus / to the ethernet port / SD card port (I'm not actually sure which of the devices are 5V and which are 3.3V, but the best option is to disable all of them), maybe even remove the battery (if it's charging). Finally, the DVD drive works better if the laptop was turned on and runnig for some time, rather than it being turned on "a minute before". Also, in the BIOS, there is a setting that changes the speed of the DVD drive, but switching it to "low" didn't seem to affect the external drive (at least not before Windows boots up).

Macbook Pro not able to burn from External DVD drive

Hi there,
I just bought a Samsung SE-208DB external drive for my 2011 Macbook Pro 8,1 13inch and at first the drive was detected by my Macbook Pro and I was able ot burn a disk but now when I plug in the device, it powers on for a bit then powers off to were I can't eject the disk anymore.Then sometimes it works just fine. I am using an external USB hub with AC plug power so I am confident power to the USb isn't an issue. I just wanted to know are Macbook Pro known to have issues with external drives?
And for those wondering why I don't just use the internal DVD on my Macbook Pro, I replaced it with an SSD for dedicated Windows 7 operating system.
Any ideas on how to approached this problem? Should I just get another brand of external DVD drive. I know I can't get Apples as for some strange reason, Apple makes those only compatible with Macs that didn't come with DVD drives like the Macbook Air.
Thanks

Ok I solved it.
The problem is that the drive uses too much power from the usb port.
You can use one of those cables with on one end two usb plugs and on the other end a mini usb. Connect the coresponding usb for power to an iphone charger or any 5v/1amp charger.
Or you can do what I did. I used a usb hub. In one usb port I connected my iphone charger and the drive to another usb port on the hub.
I have just burned my first succesful disc.
Regards

Imac 2009 external DVD drive

hi everyone.
My 2009 Imac DVD drive is damaged and spits out discs (daughter stuck a memory card in it and damaged it apparently). Bought an Apple Superdrive but its not compatible with an Imac with the built in drive!! Can anyone recommend an alternative external DVD drive to buy. Is it best to get one with a Thunderbolt conection, or is USB ok?
Advice needed please!
thank

Here are two on Amazon.com that are cheap and Mac compatible
http://www.amazon.com/LG-GP10NB20-Portable-External-Drive/dp/B004K2Z4MS/ref=sr_1 _3?ie=UTF8&qid=1398883289&sr=8-3&keywords=Mac+compatible+external+LG+optical+dr i ve
http://www.amazon.com/LG-Electronics-Portable-External-GP40NB40/dp/B009DS6OFU/re f=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1398883289&sr=8-7&keywords=Mac+compatible+external+LG+opti c al+drive
Here's another source for Mac compatible optical drives. These are better quality optical drives.
These are also tray loading drives.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/VLU2SD24XS/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MR3F82SD24S/
Good Luck!

Reinstalling OS from external DVD drive

How do I reinstall the OS from a DVD in an external DVD drive connected to the USB port on my MacBook?
Thank you.

I don't think you can, only via the external optical drive.
You can try a USB though, or install on a external drive, then option boot from it then clone it to the external drive.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16276201#16276201

Restore iMac from external dvd drive

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