Too bad mini server won't boot from an external drive

It won't. Enterprise TEch support confirmed this. I bought thew new mini server to get a good value fast machine with a quad i-7.
What's the purpose of Thuderbolt if my apps and doc folders have to reside on a SATA disk?
They really should have non server version with the i7 quad.
Even better Apple should make it clear that this is the case. Even the guy in the apple store said I coud boot it form an external drive!

Yes this will all take some time for sure.
If you want to keep lion server on your current machine, then yes, that is correct. It doesnt hurt to have a few spare 500gb+ hard drives to help the long process.
See there was previous controversy with the mac mini servers with the dual cores (the one I have) because we all wanted the better processors but to not run the server version and some also wanted to be able boot from other drives. Same as you..
In non lion versions of OSX you would normally put the SL Server DVD or SL DVD into your mac and instead of installing a fresh OS, you would select utilities , then restore from time machine backup. You could also obviously use an external drive or SD card with SL or SL server installer loaded on it to install the OS or perform the restore.
That being said
I personally only know how to use a Snow leopard Server or Regular snow leopard installer DVD (or disc imaged external hard drive partition as just mentioned) to use time machine to restore an OS. I personally dont have experience with the lion disc repair for using its utilities to restore from a backup. Im sure it works the same way though when you hold option and boot from it..
If you are looking to go NON server on your OS you must have a Snow leopard retail version DVD (not leopard upgrade version) to be installed on to an external drive.
So what you would do is Set up a partitioned external hard drive and load it up with Snow leopard, upgrade it in app store to lion ($29 ) , then update it with software update, back it up to another partition using time machine, then boot from the install dvd (or disc imaged partitioned installer of SL) , go to utilities, and select restore from backup, when its asks wher eto install choose the external you want to boot from (must be partitioned using GUID partition table) and install. When you want to boot from that drive, hold option right after you power up your machine until it gives you the option of the drive you want to boot from, select it and boot.
Unfortunately like I said you will have to have a snow leopard retail installer (no longer at the apple store only online or ebay for $30) and then would have to 'upgrade' to lion in order to NOT have lion server version on a mac mini set up for server.
If lion server version is good for you then yes do what you wrote in the reply would work. My experience with server snow leopard was that it was slower than snow leopard regular and it extremely interfered with my music production even though I was not running any of its server options..
I hope this helps..

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27" (Late 2012) iMac won't boot from any external drives.

I just got my 27" iMac (late 2012) with Fusion Drive. I can't get it to boot off any my external LaCie drive. I just get an "Ø" symbol. tried this so far:
Ensured the OS on my external drive is 10.8.2 - didn't help.
Updated (reinstalled) Mountain Lion on the external drive, using the Recovery HD that comes with the iMac, just in case it's a "special verision". - didn't help.
Connected via Thunderbolt-to-FireWire 800 adaptor - didn't help.
Connected via USB2 port on HDD to USB3 port on iMac - didn't help.
Used "Startup Disk" system prefs - didn't help.
Used "hold doen ALT key" after startup chime. Can see the drive but - didn't help.
So - has anyone had any luck booting a new iMac off an external device at all?
I might try a Carbon Copy Clone of the Fusion Drive - but I'm thinking it's a waste of time - instinct tells me it's a Firmware limitationin the machine that prevents booting from externals.

trying a clone after all due to this discussion https://discussions.apple.com/message/20938457#20938457

MacBook won't boot from new hard drive.

I'm trying to upgrade my hard drive, but my macbook will not boot to the new hard drive. I have erased and cloned the hard drive about three times now, using both Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper. It won't boot while it is in the macbook and it won't boot from an external hard drive case. All I get to is the screen with the mac logo and the spinning wheel. I have made sure the drive is GUID formatted, but it still doesn't work. When I put the new drive in an external case and plug it into the USB port of my macbook I can see and access everything on the drive. Can somebody please tell what I am doing wrong?
By the way the new hard drive is a 500gb western digital Scorpio blue drive.

I got a new hard drive recently 500gb seagate. I followed the directions on this page http://www.ehow.com/how2063795format-hard-drive-mac-os.html , Mine was a little more complicated since i had 2 partitions windows and mac on mine. Initially the process took a day and it started getting to the same thing as yours where it would get to the mac logo and not find the hard drive. I reformatted several times before i got to the point where i could boot up.Eventually I just figured out all the info was there the drive was formatted i could boot into windows 7 but not mac. So i put old hard drive back in the computer booted up with that. Attached new hard drive via usb in external case i was trying to put in the mac. I was able not to boot up but it would show the drives that have been formatted into the new drive and i simply copied my existing Disk by dragging it onto the new hard drive. Than turn off your mac keep your hard drive plugged in. Press and hold the option key in start up and you should see the 2 seperate hard drives and be able to boot into the new one. Was a long process for me took several complete deletes of the new hard drive and reformatting before it would work. once you get to the mac logo and spinning wheel its just saying mac cant find your boot up disk though. Sorry its confusing a bit any questions email me.

Mac Mini i7 (Mavericks) will not boot from the external drive

Mac Mini i7 (Mavericks) will not boot from the external drive with Disk Warroir 4.4. or Drive Genius or Lion.
Not even from the external Firewire hard drive with Mavericks

Does the external HD have a GUID partition table?
Is the external drive formatted Mac OS X Extended (journaled)?
Is this a 2011 or late 2012 Mac?
How was Mavericks installed on the external drive?
Who is the builder of the drive mechanism in the external drive?
Who is the builder of the external enclosure?
What type of interface does the external drive have USB2, USB3, Firewire 400, Firewire 800, thunderbolt?
Is the external enclosure directly connected to the mini?
Have youtried a different interface cable?

Booting from an external drive 10.3.2 with new i7 mac mini

How to boot from an external drive with 10.3.2 using a new i7 mac mini. Seems to be a build problem?

Your Mac is incapable of running 10.3.2. The version of OS X 10.3 is PowerPC only and your Mac has an Intel processor.
Why do you want to do that?
Allan

Can I boot from an external drive with a "Virtual CD"

I just purchased a Hitachi LifeStudio external hard drive for use as my Time Machine backup. When I plugged it in to my MacBook running 10.6.4, I realized that it had one of those "Virtual CDs" that contained the manufacturers crapware, similar to Western Digital's MyWare or whatever its called. It shows up in disk utility as an actual separate disk and not just another partition that can be wiped.
I reformatted the drive using GUID and and created 3 HFS+ Journaled partitions. One was going to be for the 10.6 installer, one for the 10.6 boot, and one for my time machine backup. I restored a 10.6 install dvd disk image I created using disk utility to the 10.6 installer partition (with erase destination checked) then option booted my mac and the partitions did not show up. The only thing I could see was my internal hard drive.
I have done this many times before and it has always worked so Im trying to figure out what Im doing wrong. The only thing I can think of is that the "Virtual CD" that Hitachi put on this external drive is stopping the Mac from seeing the bootable partitions I created. I even went into system preferences>startup disk and blessed the 10.6 install partition. That didn't work either, the computer just booted to my internal drive.
So my questions are. Is it because of this "Virtual CD" that I can't boot from my external drive? If so, is there a way around it? I already searched their web site and emailed their tech support asking for a firmware update to remove the virtual cd.
Thanks in advance.

Yes, it's a known issue. You've already referred to the issue with WD systems. WD has a long list of products that are either not compatible with Macs or won't boot a Mac.
There are practically no problems with bare drives, but once installed in an enclosure there is no guarantee that the package will function as a bootable device. This is especially the case if the manufacturer uses some sort of "virtual" scheme intended for using the device as a sort of one button backup device.
External drives don't have to specifically say anything about being Mac bootable or compatible. It's up to the consumer to verify compatibility and usability.

Booting From An External Drive in OS 9.2?

I have a G4 with a bad internal ROM drive. I am currently running OS 9.2.
I would like to upgrade to OS 10.
I have an Iomega USB 2.0 external drive connected to my computer via the USB port in the back.
How can I boot from the disk in this external drive?
I tried holding "option"- it only found my regular hard drive.
I tried holding "cmd-opt-shift-del" but my mac got very confused and blinked a ? at me.
How can I boot from the external drive so I can upgrade?
Thanks
O.

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
Mac OS X will not boot from USB drives on a PowerPC.
You need a Firewire optical drive to boot, and an AGP PowerMac G4 at that to boot Mac OS X. To identify your PowerMac G4, see this article:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58418
Once you've identified it, boot the machine into Mac OS 9 on the hard drive and make sure your firmware is up to date:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86117
And then you'll be able to install Mac OS X. Follow these precautions on my FAQ before doing so:
http://www.macmaps.com/upgradefaq.html
If it turns out you have a PCI PowerMac G4, you'll have to replace the optical drive internally to boot Mac OS X or Mac OS 9.
Also make sure your clock battery is under 4 years old before attempting to upgrade the firmware. It is a 3.6 V 1/2 AA battery you can buy from Radio Shack item 23-026.

How Do I Always Boot From An External Drive

I successfully installed Mac OS X 10.4.8 on an external hard drive. It boots successfully into OS X, but only if you press option on boot and select the drive or if you boot from the drive inside my Mac Mini and go to startup disk and select the external. Is there any way to just always boot from the external drive without doing anything? Thanks in advance for all of your help.
Mac Mini PowerPC Mac OS X (10.4.8)

If booting from a cold start doesn't work but restarting after selecting the drive does work, then most likely the drive isn't ready when the Mac is doing the cold boot.
Try turning the drive on several seconds before turning on the Mac.

OSX 10.4 not booting from an external drive..

I have an 1 Ghz G4 iMac that is causing some major headaches.
It started by the machine crashing every 15-20 minutes.
A fresh re-install seemed to be the best option.
In order to sort out the problem I decided to install a fresh copy of OSX on an external firewire drive.
The install went without any problems but then I was unable to boot from the firewire drive.
Even holding down the option key and selecting the drive manually didn't do anything.
I then decided to do an archive install on the internal drive. This crashed in mid-installation making the internal drive in-accessible.
Anybody have any tips on how to get out of this mess?
E.

Since your machine crashed while running from the install disc, it sounds like there is a problem not related to the Operating System on your drive. Have you installed any ram, other than that which came with your iMac? If so, remove it and try to boot from your firewire drive again. (The installation onto that drive was sucessful, right?)If you're successful in booting the computer and it runs with more stablility minus any extra ram, you have a bad ram stick.
My fear here is that since your previous re-install failed I'm not certain that another attempt to install on that drive wil save all your stuff... if you can boot from your external drive, I'd rescue your data, photos, music, etc., to the external before trying to re-install on your internal drive.
Dual 1.8 G5, Powerbook G4 1.5GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Booting from an external drive when the internal has died

Hello, I have an older iMac mid 2007 2.4 GHz Intel model. Around 2009 my internal hard drive failed and for the last few years I had a nice work around using an external drive to boot into OSX. I was curious however if anyone knew of an official or well documented method of using this method because for what ever reason the drive is not being recognized. My method is a combination of trial and error until it booted properly but recently it has just stopped recognizing the disc or when installing the OS it will just fail near the end of the install. Tried to hold Option with the disc installed on boot to see if I could boot from CD but it never seems to show up as an option.
I thought that the drive was damaged but I was able to reformat and use it for a few months with my PC so I have confidence it is not that.
The other problem I was curious about is the format of the drive and how I can even go about reformatting to the mac journal. I cant seem to get into disk utility all I get is a white screen.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Original Information
OS: 10.4.x
Ram: 2g ddr2
I have been able to many time before reinstall using my leopard and snow leopard disks.

Okay just clarifying my INTERNAL hard drive is most likely dead, I am looking to install and boot from my external hard drive. According to this AHT article
Before you begin
Important: If your Mac was released after June 2013, you will use Apple Diagnostics rather than Apple Hardware Test (AHT). See Using Apple Diagnostics for instructions.
Consider doing some preliminary troubleshooting to determine if your issue is related to hardware. You can try to determine if the cause of your issue is related to hardware or software by following Isolating issues in Mac OS X. AHT can help determine which hardware component may be causing the issue.
Before starting AHT, be sure to disconnect all external devices except the keyboard, mouse, display, and Ethernet adapter. Also disconnect any external optical drives.
My goal is to find a way to boot from my external drive.
"Won't matter, as long as you have the Disc.
To make it botable, you will need to set the Partition Map Scheme (GUID Partition Table) and Format it (Mac OS Extended Journaled) before installing OS X."
The disc or the drive? I assume you mean the drive but according to the document that should be removed.

Will Mac allow you to boot from an external drive...specifically for windows programs?

Will a new Mac allow you to boot from an external drive...specifically for windows programs?

ps...I've read the threads on Bootcamp.

How do I boot from an external drive?

I've just Carbon Cloned my 60GB drive to a firewire external drive. I'm about to replace the 60GB with a 160GB drive and the CCC instructions say boot from the external drive I'd just created once the new disk is installed. Then CCC the cloned drive back to the new hard drive.
So, how do I boot from an external drive? Do I have load anything to the new drive? Will the macbook detect the external drive and boot from that? Or what??????
Thanks
Dick

Thanks DWB. Being the rash impetuous guy I am I didn't wait for replies and just switched on the macbook after installing the new disk (which was so easy it was unbelievable - had to go and buy a a little torx bit though) to see what would happen.
Blow me down with a feather if it didn't just boot off the external drive all by itself :-O It did come up with the disk was unverified and I could see it in FINDER and I was prseented with a screen to ERASE/RESTORE etc.
When I went to CCC the external drive back to the new hard drive it didn't give show me the new hard drive so I guessed I'd have to do something to format (?) the hard drive.
I don't know if I did the right thing but I went to disk utilities and chose ERASE in the vague hope it would maybe format the disk in some way.
Seems to work now and the CCC replaced the system perfectly as far as I can see.
Basically very impressive all round. Piece of proverbial to replace the disk and CCC made life so easy.
Thanks again.
Cheers
Dick

Elitebook 8440p - recovery disc creation & booting from an external drive

I have a brand new Elitebook 8440p & I have a couple of issues that I cannot seem to resolve.
1. I expected to get some sort of system install, or recovery or repair discs - or the ability to create such disks with this laptop. Nothing came with it, and I cannot find any place to create some sort of system recovery disks, nor is there anything listed for this laptop on the HP site to acquire them from HP. I am not comfortable having no way to recover this computer should a hard disk go south. Any ideas how to create or get an op system disk or recovery discs or something?
2. I have an encrypted company/business hard disc inside the laptop for work. I also have the original hard disk that came with the computer in an external eSata/USB case. I have configured and installed software on the external drive to include my personal software and programs, leaving the company hard disc inside the laptop for business use only. However, I cannot make this laptop boot from the external drive if the company drive is inside the laptop. I have read and tried everything, but if a drive is inside the laptop, it will not boot from the external eSata/USB drive. If I simply remove the laptop hard drive, it boots perfectly from the external drive via eSata and works fine. How do I manage to get this laptop to boot from my external drive without having to remove the internal hard drive?
Any help or ideas someone can offer are greatly appreciated. Thanks very much.

Hi, Rich:
If you live in the USA or Canada, you can get a set of restore disks from HP for $10. I am surprised you didn't get a set but maybe they only come with the business desktops.
Here is how you order them:
1. Write down the part number and serial # on bottom of the computer on the white tag. The model # is an HP-Compaq 8440p, but the part number will be found on that white tag below the serial #.
2. Call HP at 1-800-952-7689, option 1 (ordering restore disks is part of the list in the option).
3. Provide the info asked by the rep that answers the phone. Some just ask for the serial #, some want both, or they will just want the serial number and type of computer (8440p).
4. Have a Master Card or Visa ready for purchasing. They don't take Discover. You will be charged $10.00.
You will receive the disks by First Class Mail or you can pay an additional $10.00 for FedEx shipping.
Sorry, I can't answer your second question. I assume you have already tried hitting the F9 key at the HP splash screen to select the device to boot from?
Paul

FV2 and booting from an external drive

Hi,
When Lion came out I decided to enable filevault as I take my laptop everywhere.
Periodically I take a full SuperDuper backup of my hard drive just in case the worst happens.
I have read that its best to remove the FileVault protection before entertaining an upgrade so I have removed FV and took another full superduper backup.
Part of my upgrade plan is to test the backup by booting my MBP from the external drive so that I know I can get back to my old machine but I am finding that I can reboot my MBP and select the backup drive from the bootable selection and I get the apple logo and the spinning cog but it doesnt go any further.
I think this has happened since enabling FV as I have never had an issue before booting from an external drive.
I have formatted the drive and started a fresh SuperDuper backup and this hasnt made a difference either.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
Gavin

They all are formatted Extended and with Guid partition map. So I am good that way. I will have to experiment I suppose. Thanks for your response.

Mac Mini server won't boot after logoff, any suggestions?

My mac Mini Server will not boot after administrator logoff, I get a gray screen with the spinning progress wheel, but nothing happens. Any suggestions?

Can you boot into single user mode? If so, run fsck and post the results.

Too bad mini server won't boot from an external drive

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