Should I be able to boot from external firewire disk?

Yesterday, to prepare for upgrading to Leopard, I copied across my hard drive contents onto an external Firewire drive, by using drag & drop, folder by folder.
I was hoping that this would let me (after a reboot) select the external drive as my Startup Disk in System Prefs, or allow me to choose it if I rebooted holding down the alt key. However the external drive doesn't show up in either case.
Is there something else I need to do to allow booting via external Firewire? Is that even possible on my PB 1.5GHz (OSX 10.3.9)? Thanks.

Close, but no cigar! Copying by drag n drop misses invisible files necessary for a boot volume. The way to do this is to use one of the cloning programs like SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner to copy everything needed to make the FW drive bootable. You can even specify to NOT copy all your files if you wish.
I go to Versiontracker.com to get these programs.

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SATA DVD RW should I be able to boot from this?

I am having problems installing WinXP. I have a SATA DVD Rom, should I be able to boot from the WinXP CD to load Windows from this or do I need to use an IDE Rom?
Phil...
I'll get there in the end

Oh, sorry that I didn't write a full name. It's MSI K8T Neo-FSR.
I'm not sure if it's too old, because the drive works with no problems in Windows and even during booting up I can see a text from RAID agent (or something like this, I'm not sure if it's a proper name) that my device is installed. The only thing, which doesn't work is fact that I can't choose it in Boot Sequence :(
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Tiger won't boot from external firewire

Installed 10.4.3 DVD on clean external firewire (Extended/Journaled). Before I installed Tiger, I ran updates, and repaired permissions. Everything looked good to me.
I'm keeping Panther on main system drive for now - so from System Preferences>Startup Disk>the external tiger drive appears and I select it. Then I select restart and the promt confirms that the computer will restart with 10.4.3. Looks good so far.
After restart, I'm looking at the desktop, guess what? It's 10.3.9, not 10.4.3. How could that be?
Also, when I restart and hold down the Option key for Startup Manager options - the firewire drive does not appear as an option.
So Tiger appears in System Preferences>Startup Disc as an option, but the option doesn't actually work, and that drive does not appear at all in (Option key) startup manager.
I'm Indexing the firewire drive now (OMG is that slow or what!), but I'm not expecting this to make any difference. I'm stumped. What am I overlooking? Please advise.
Muchas Gracias

R MacCool,
"What if I manually drag and drop the 4 folders (from the Tiger DVD) onto a second internal SATA drive without partitioning the drive first? Will I be able to boot off an internal SATA drive like that? When I installed Tiger on the external firewire I see that 4 folders are there - I could drag them from that drive onto the second internal drive. Does that work?"
No, this does not work. MacOS X consists of more then 20,000 invisible files, most of them somehow connected and referencing each other.
MacOS X DOES boot from external firewire drives, both hard disks and DVD drives.
Why don't you just upgrade your current 10.3.9 to Tiger using this procedure: 10.4 Tiger Upgrade: Decision tree+Checklist?
"Why does Tiger seem to install correctly, then System Pref>Startup Disc recognizes it, but then after selecting 10.4.3 it restarts into 10.3.9?"
I am not a technician, but it could be that the firmware is the primary source for connectivity. After MacOS X has booted the internal firewire drivers might take over and "overrule" the firmware (this is why you can see it in the startup disk preference pane) but at boot-time it exclusively depends on the firmware. This theory might be completely wrong though.

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.

Should I boot from external hard disk and how do I achieve this?

I'm in a downward spiral and need advice about if booting off of an external hard disc is the right thing to do and how to go about it. How I got into this mess I'll write below. My immediate problem is that I want to be able to install a copy of osx 10.5 from the original disks that came with my computer onto a usb hard drive. Then I want to boot from that drive and install software such as disk warrior on the same external hard drive in order to repair and recover the files on my internal hard disk. Not sure if this is easy to do with the install disk that came boxed with my macbook. So is what I want to do feasible and how do I do it? Thanks.
How did I get into this mess?
For those with time to read more. A downward spiral (and my macbook was working fine)::
I have been backing up my work documents onto a 20 GB pendrive waiting to get the money to buy an nas to work with time machine for the two macbooks we have at home as a place to backup photos and video. I bought a network drive but it wouldn't work with my macbook; my time machine backup freezing at 3 gb, but works fine with wife's macbook pro.
I tried to do TM backup on a usb hard disk and got the same problem. Support forums indicated that hard disk problems could confuse TM, so although I was experiencing problem free computing I ran disk utility from internal osx. This indicated an <invalid node structure - file system verify or repair failed> at the checking catalog file stage. So I followed instructions to run disk utility and repair from the installation disk. When I ran disk utility from installation disk I get exactly the same <invalid node structure - file system verify or repair failed>. It gets worse.
After failing with install disk utility, I could not then boot from my hard disk (I had had trouble free computing up to my attempts to use TM) or eject the disk. At first attempt I had no option but to boot from dvd again as hd not offered as an option. Second attempt hd option available but fails. By reading advice given to others I managed to eject the dvd and have tried:
safe boot - it won't
boot in verbose mode and single user (indicates I have disk0s2:I/O error) and won't boot
try to use disk utility from install disk to create disk image on external hd, it won't (cites i/o error)
If I can boot from an external I will try to repair with Disk Warrior as forums indicate that this software has been able to solve <invalid node structure> issues (but am open to recommendations of other products). I also hope that I may be able to try again to burn a disk image sucessfully if this repair works. I'm still trying to save my photos and videos that aren't backed up.
I plan to try an archive and install installation but first I want to try a repair with disk warrior as I fear that archive and install won't work and I'll end up having to erase and repair my hard disk.
I feel like some perverse god is punishing me for trying to do the right thing and back up my hard disk.
Macbook 5.1 late 2008
Intel Core 2 Duo
OSX Leopard 10.5.8
85 GB of a 150GB hard disk needs backing up (saving)

I am not sure about this, but my memory is that if you try to partition the drive (in OS 10.5.8) it will erase the data.
But you can try. Go through the Add a partition steps, but watch for any warnings. If my memory is correct there will be a message to the effect that everything will be erased. If you see that, do not proceed. This page has info about how to do it, if it can be done: http://www.macworld.com/article/1164643/live_partition.html
With respect to DW on an external, I do that. I have a 80 GB external - I call it Emergency - with an OS, DW and TechTool Pro on it. (Since I have is a recovery partition built in with all new OS, Emergency would be of use only if I need to run DW or TTP.) I have never yet had to use it, but it's there. It is not usually connected - I just did that for this screen shot.

Booting from external Firewire drive--possible?

If I add a USB/Firewire card to my Beige G3 minitower (300MHz), can I then boot from an external Firewire hard drive on which I have installed Panther? A comment by Tina Garfield in another thread seems to suggest this is indeed possible. (I didn't want to "threadjack" that discussion, so I created this new one. I hope Tina sees it and can help me.)
Tina wrote the following:
Having Firewire allows you to have external drives,
which you will be able to boot from, and make
backups and maintenance especially easy.
I was under the impression that the Beige G3 can't see iadd-on Firewire/USB cards until the machine has booted from the internal hard drive. I really hope I am wrong! If it is indeed possible to have the machine recognize the external drive at startup, and there is something I need to do to enable this, please let me know.
Thanks!
GeeKay

Hi GeeKay,
Ditto to everything Grant posted, with an extra reminder to be sure to download XPostFacto 3.1 and not version 4. I believe on the XPF page ( http://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/Framework.cfm?page=XPostFacto3.ht ml ), the download for 3.1 is a little bit down the page.
If/when you buy an external FW drive be sure it has an Oxford chipset. If the description does not include mention of the the Oxford chipset, I would strongly recommend finding another external drive that does specify this. Our Beiges are very particular about what they will accept for external booting, and the Oxford chipset is a critical component.
Also, I've found, since I do partition my external firewire drives, that I can boot only from the first partition of the external drive, similar to the behavior of our internal drives. In addition, with one of my Beiges, my "helper" disk that I specify to XPostFacto to allow me to boot externally must be the first partition of my internal drive.
I don't believe that you can actually INSTALL to an external drive. I simply cloned my internal drive's system over to the FW drive. This can be done with software such as the free Silverkeeper ( http://www.lacie.com/silverkeeper/ ) or with shareware SuperDuper ( http://www.shirt-pocket.com/ ) which are both great for all backups. I happen to prefer SuperDuper because of its redundancy -- it explains EVERY step before you take it and then, even after you tell it to go ahead, it asks you again to be sure That's what you want to do.
Once set up, however, it is extremely cool, and helpful, to be able to boot externally. If your external drive is dual USB/FW, you will only be able to boot when connected via Firewire. None of the Beiges are USB-bootable.
Hope this helps, and keep us posted,
Tina

Booting from a Firewire Disk backup - get Startup Manager to show FW disk

Hi all,
A hint that I have discovered whilst trying to create a backup on a Firewire external Hard disk and boot my eMac from it.
eMac 1.0GHz (ATI), OS X Tiger 10.4.7 and OWC Mercury Elite Pro 40Gb firewire external disk (Oxford 911+ chipset)
I created a bootable backup using both Carbon Copy Cloner and/or Rsyncx on the firewire disk, but with the same results each time - it woudn't boot from startup manager. I was careful to make sure that the disk was bootable and it would boot from the FW disk after selecting it in system preferences/startup disk and restarting. O.K so far.
OS X also offers an alternative boot method using the startup manager at boot time which you can enter by holding down the option key while turning on the eMac until the startup manager comes up. Normally it shows your "macitoshHD" and "repair" hard drives and you can select the preferred boot up drive. According to Apple help it should also show bootable Firewire disks, but I could not get this to happen.
After a bit of trial and error, I found this sequence reveals the FW dive.
. Make sure your firewire external drive is turned on and plugged in to a firewire port on your eMac.
.Power on the eMac whilst holding down the option key (The key with the apple and squiggley thing next to the spacebar)
.Keep holding the option key until the startup manager icons appear.
.Once the startup manager appears, it will take about 30 secs to 1 min to scan for drives.
. Usually icons showing your internal bootable drives will show along with a rescan and continue icon.
. To get the FW drive to show, hold down the option key and click the rescan button (the turned back arrow icon on the left)
.The system will then rescan and find the firewire drives and show their icons as well as the internal drive icons.
. Select the firewire drive (You did give it a unique name didn't you?) and the click the continue arrow on the right.
. Watch the FW drive activity light and you should see lots of flashing and there you are - booting from the FW drive.
I couldn't find any reference in all the help references to holding down the opt key to rescan, so maybe it is peculiar to this eMac?
Give it a try and be sure to let me know if it works for you.
Ian

OK JMVP, but there is something a little strange here.
After I booted the system whilst holding down the OPTION key, startup manager appeared and scanned for drives but only showed the normal internal drives. (By this time I had already released the OPTION key). I clicked the re-scan icon and same thing, still no FW drive. According to all the Apple help files it should show the external FW drive as well.
But, when I held down the the OPTION key and clicked the rescan icon again, it rescanned and showed the internal drives AND the FW drive. Maybe it's an undocumented feature of startup manager, maybe it's peculiar to the FW drive I'm using
I will try to update the firmware, but the manufacturers website says it doesn't need updating to work with Tiger. Other than this minor prob it already seems to be working OK. Just won't show up in the startup manager without rescanning with the option key pressed.
I did notice whilst searching the help files that there is another option to boot from external drives:
Hold down Option-Command-Shift-Delete keys during startup - this will Bypass primary startup volume and seek a different startup volume (such as a CD or external disk). It didn't work in my case.
Curious?
eMac (ATI) Mac OS X (10.4.7) Mac Newbie

Boot from external firewire HD with ibook G4

I have installed a copy of my tiger OS on a passport studio portable HD. I then upgraded it to leopard using my installer disk. I am able to boot my desktop imac with it but I cannot do the same for my ibook which is what I want it for. I used the "universal method" of installing to the drive. It is partitioned using APM as instructed. The drive shows up on my desktop and the software is there but I cannot boot from it using system preferences, holding the option key or even restarting from the installer disk. I am open to any suggestions at this point.

The Passport Studio?
I'm not familiar with that devices specifications;
but if it sports USB 2.0 and not FireWire400,
and does not have the equivalent of an Oxford
chipset, it won't support booting PPC Macs.
Or it may, but sometimes a brand of hard disk
within some enclosures don't boot Mac well.
Anyway, you could see if the OS X Installer's
version of Disk Utility can repair the disk drive
or see if there are any error reports from there.
Apple Partition Map is the forma; HFS+ should
work, if it isn't the same and there is no option.
But Intel Macs use a different format scheme.
{Is the installer disc a suitable one for the
computer you have, or is it from a different
Mac model and version? Is it older than
the computer, or is it the as-shipped disc?
It would have to be a machine specific or
retail disc newer than the as-shipped OS.}
Newer Macs with Intel processor can boot from
a properly formatted USB 2.0 externally powered
hard disk drive and enclosure. Or in some cases
a USB powered device... Or, a reduced version
of OS X on a specially-prepared USB Flash drive.
Was the system on an external FW HD put
there via a clone utility, as taken from a full
normal installed system, from a computer?
Or was the external FW HD the recipient
of a full new installation to the attached drive
from the host computer, as an optional place
to install the OSX version you have?
There are some rules, of those a few can be
found in the home page, Carbon Copy Cloner.
The basics for cloning vary with the software
utilities used and it is possible to make a bad
clone which cannot boot a computer in FW.
Or one so corrupted, that an hour's wait and
time spent fixing bad permissions is needed.
In the meantime, I am set to go a few hundred
miles and won't be taking a computer; no net
and too cold of weather.
Hopefully someone will see this thread and
add some thoughts on the topic. Sorry I was
not of more help.
Good luck & happy computing!
edited.

Boot from external USB disk

Is there any way to boot from an external USB disk formatted in NTFS or UFS (CD/DVD format)? Basically my idea was to be able to boot the Win7 install image from an USB device. I tried many different ways, I even have my old internal HDD with the boot camp partition in a USB case (I just upgraded to 500GB!! ;)) but I can't in any way boot from USB. Only OSX backup and its installation disk boot fine from an external USB source. Any idea?

It isn't well supported by Microsoft. The problem on Apple hardware is you can't even make changes to the BIOS boot manager.
I have 4 internal hard drives so it is rather easy to boot from one hard drive and run the installer.
You ran into the lack of support for UEFI though which adds another layer and meant most likely having to alter and reburn the ISO to disc with Imgburn or something (and can be done from Windows only so you need a VM).
I got tired of the trouble and work arounds needed though and in the end I just built my own custom PCs - one of which has native eSATA that are bootable (an Intel DX58SO board).
Oh, and it is easy to install Windows 7 on PC, then just move the drive into Mac Pro and boot from there!

Stupid question: force booting from external FireWire drive

My PowerBook is refusing to boot from it's hard drive (flashing ?/folder), which I'll be attempting to repair using DiskWarrior, etc.
But it's also not finding and booting from the OS X installed on my external FireWire drive (which it could do under normal circumstances). How do I force it to do that given that I'm unable to set the Start Up Volume in the normal manner?
PowerBook G4 17" 1.5GHz 512MB 80GB Mac OS X (10.3.6)

Dale,
Thanks for your response. I've been through the usual stuff as in your reference and I eventually got it to boot off the external HD by just leaving it long enough - it took maybe 10-15 minutes. I'm booted from it now. I hadn't thought of using the Startup Manager, but will try to remember next time.
As for the internal HD, it's looking like it's dead - neither Disk Warrior nor Data Rescue II seem to be able to see it. I tried Disk Utility from the external HD, but it doesn't see it and nor does the Profiler. Maybe it's just a loose connection internally. There is a noise coming from the PB from about just under the division between the left hand rest and the speaker. It sort of sounds like a disk continually being read or written - ie. a sort of very rapid clicking, but I don't think it's the HD. And I don't think it's the fan. Anyone with any ideas before I call AppleCare?
I did have a very similar problem a few weeks ago (http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1465680#1465680), but Disk Warrior fixed it apparently with next to no problems. I was going to wipe the drive at the weekend & reinstall, but didn't get round to it in the end ... Fortunately I had a backup this time and was able to restore my user simply by copying it.

Problems booting from external firewire drive

Here's a weird one...
I'm trying to help a buddy with a 3rd gen MBP and a new WD 'My Studio' firewire external drive.
He can mount and use the drive but is unable to boot from it. When starting up his machine with option, the drive doesn't show up as selection. The really odd part is the drive does work if plugged in with the USB cable!
The drive in question DOES work as expected on my 5th gen MBP with firewire. Further, I can stert my MBP in target disc mode and it will function as expected as a bootable external drive for his machine. The system in question was cloned with Carbon Copy Cloner. And again, it boots from my MBP.
I've tried different sets of cables (even though everything works on my system). I actually had him send the drive back for warranty replacement but of course the new one behaves the same way.
What could be the cause of apparently certain firewire drives not being bootable (but otherwise working) on a 3rd gen MBP? The intended workflow is to be studio/audio work so using the USB connection for a workaround would not be an option.
Any clues? Windows is not even installed on any of these machines!

baltwo wrote:
FWIW, many WD HDs won't boot Macs and booting Macs isn't supported. Details at their site. That's the main reason I never recommend their crappy HDs.
Actually I'm very familiar with that list- spent a lot of time looking at this past week!
Ironically, the majority of that page is a list of drives which they claim WILL boot Macs. In fact, the list is entitled "List of Mac-bootable WD external drives..."
And yep, mine is on there...on the list that reads "The following external hard drives should be bootable on Intel-based Mac computers systems through FireWire (1394a/b)" is "MyBook Studio" as well as my drive model number.
But that's all beside the point. Like you, I couldn't recommend their drives at this point. At least make sure if you buy one that the vendor has a good return policy.
Dave

G4 PowerMac no longer boots from External FireWire Hard Drive

What would cause a G4 PM to no longer boot from an Ext. FW HD that was working fine yesterday and in fact still mounts fine on the desktop..... but when I go into system pref's and attempt to select the ext. HD (and it does show up as an option to boot from since it has an OS in Mac OS Extended Format, Journaled) but after selecting said drive the system simply defaults to the main HD instead and not the external HD I selected within system pref's.???
(I've run apple's disc utilities / First Aid ..... it simply says no repairs were necessary).
The HD in question is a Maxtor 120GB 7200 ATA133 in the following ADS enclosure:
Click Here
Same enclosure works fine with a pionner 110D S-Drive.
Any Suggestions (short of installing the Maxtor hard drive internally which I may have to try anyway)?

Why is my GUID partitioned HD not booting from external firewire

Hello everyone,
I have a new 2TB WD EARS drive which I have Snow Leopard installed on. It was cloned from my 1TB WD drive which was running Snow Leopard perfectly beforehand. I have the 2TB HDD installed in a firewire400/800/USB/eSata enclosure and I cannot boot up from the HDD. It is GUID Partitioned as you can see from the Info below:
    Name :     WDC WD20 EARS-19MVWB0 Media
    Type :     Disk
    Partition Map Scheme :     GUID Partition Table
    Disk Identifier :     disk1
    Media Name :     WDC WD20 EARS-19MVWB0 Media
    Media Type :     Generic
    Connection Bus :     USB
    USB Serial Number :     000001D919A8
    Writable :     Yes
    Ejectable :     Yes
    Mac OS 9 Drivers Installed :     No
    Location :     External
    Total Capacity :     1.8 TB (2,000,398,934,016 Bytes)
    S.M.A.R.T. Status :     Not Supported
    Disk Number :     1
    Partition Number :     0
Name :     CREAZNMIND
    Type :     Volume
    Disk Identifier :     disk1s2
    Mount Point :     /Volumes/CREAZNMIND
    File System :     Mac OS Extended
    Connection Bus :     USB
    Writable :     Yes
    Universal Unique Identifier :     22415261-328A-3D43-80BC-241D1051E78C
    Capacity :     1.8 TB (2,000,054,956,032 Bytes)
    Free Space :     1.3 TB (1,393,188,286,464 Bytes)
    Used :     565.2 GB (606,866,669,568 Bytes)
    Number of Files :     851,286
    Number of Folders :     186,288
    Owners Enabled :     No
    Can Turn Owners Off :     Yes
    Can Be Formatted :     Yes
    Bootable :     Yes
    Supports Journaling :     Yes
    Journaled :     No
    Disk Number :     1
    Partition Number :     2
I am unable to boot in both firewire 400/800 and USB. What is confusing is that if another drive with a partition format for windows is installed the drive is recognized without a problem and mounts. I can see the HDD in Disk Utility but only the Disk itself is selectable but the partition is greyed out. The drive also cannot be checked or repaired in Disk Utility when connected with the firewire enclosure. I have tried this on two seperate apple computers, one even being an older PPC. Another thing that confuses me is that if I attached the HD to the computer using only a SATA/USB adapter cable, I can boot off the drive just fine. And when connected to a PPC the drive mounts seemlessly. I went into the shop where I purchased my enclosure and after some testing they said that it was because of the GPT Protection which is just GUI Partition Table. They said this is a somewhat common problem with Firewire enclosures and even LaCie reported this problem. Has anyone ever heard of this? Is there a problem between GUID and Firewire interfaces? If Intel Macs can only use GUID partitioning how can I get around this problem? I've looked around and it seems it's possible to install SL onto an APM drive by cloning from an Intel system, but why won't it just work the way it's supposed to? Any insights would be helpful....
Thanks in advance!

Journaled isn't a requirement for SL to boot. All I can suggest for the OP is to erase and repartition the HD; then, try again.

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

New MacPro not booting from external firewire

Hey guys, quick question.
I have just gotten the new 2009 MacPro and when I try to boot from an external drive it just freezes. I know the image is good because it boots up no problem on my iMac. It wont boot either through firewire or USB.
Any ideas and/or help is greatly appreciated.

Apple is kinda weird about software versions. Leopard on the Mac Pro install disc likely has some special stuff to take advantage of hyperthreading and different things that older Macs didn't have. If I'm not mistaken, Nehalem can't even boot off a drive from an older Mac Pro.
I believe the minimum OS that a Nehalem Mac Pro can run is 10.5.6. After poking around a bit with the install discs, I was interested to learn that Nehalem's version of iLife also includes special drivers to take special advantage of Hyper-Threading as well as some other elements of Nehalem's architecture.
Undoubtedly, Snow Leopard will include support for all the Intel systems, but until then, the included install/restore discs are your only way of installing a Nehalem-compatible boot drive. If you lose them, you'll have to go to talk to an Apple "Genius" to get things sorted.

Should I be able to boot from external firewire disk?

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