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View Full Version : which brand of drives are OSX bootable?




thevessels
May 8, 2005, 06:26 PM
so i tried to make my 80GB lacie porche drive bootable
and it wouldnt go
it just kept giving me the message "this drive is not bootable"
i tried re-erasing is a few times - but still nothing
is there certain drives that are known to be OSX bootable friendly - and others that arnt ?
im thinkin ill get a western or maxtor ... good or not ?
-chris



yellow
May 8, 2005, 08:45 PM
Any drive that has a bootable copy of OS X installed on it should work just fine. Manufacturers don't matter.
How were you trying to make it a bootable disk? What was installed on it?

hodgjy
May 8, 2005, 08:49 PM
As long as the drive is Firewire 400 or 800 (and I think--not completely sure if it has to be formatted in HFS+ or not) you can boot off it.

PlaceofDis
May 8, 2005, 08:50 PM
well i when i tried to make my maxtor external drive bootable it wouldnt let me at frist until i partioned it..... dont know why that had any effect on it though

Dm84
May 8, 2005, 11:22 PM
As long as the drive is Firewire 400 or 800 (and I think--not completely sure if it has to be formatted in HFS+ or not) you can boot off it.You can't install OS X on a partition that isn't formatted in HFS+.

thevessels
May 9, 2005, 12:20 AM
As long as the drive is Firewire 400 or 800 (and I think--not completely sure if it has to be formatted in HFS+ or not) you can boot off it.

the external drive has to be firewire ?
usb 2 is no good ? ( i didnt think it was THAT much slower )

ill look into this HFS biz .. thanks

yellow
May 9, 2005, 06:42 AM
Does your Mac support USB2?

mad jew
May 9, 2005, 06:45 AM
It might just be a vicious myth, but I'm pretty sure you can only boot from a firewire external, not a USB (2.0 or otherwise).

cube
May 9, 2005, 07:01 AM
You can't install OS X on a partition that isn't formatted in HFS+.

You can format it UFS, but it cannot be used by OS 9.

Yaja123
May 9, 2005, 07:41 AM
it has to be hfs+.

i have a 250gb firewire lacie porsche and although i havent made it bootable, i do specifically remember this being a definate requirement.

use lacie's "Silverkeeper" - a free program from their website or version tracker, it does exactly what u want.

u dont need to buy a differetnt drive... and actually the lacie porsche is a maxtor with diff packaging. they are all the same.

use the sliverkeeper program, it has a "do u want to make this a bootable drive" option.

hodgjy
May 9, 2005, 09:29 AM
You can't install OS X on a partition that isn't formatted in HFS+.

You can also install OS X on Unix File System, but Apple doesn't support it.

thevessels
May 9, 2005, 11:21 AM
you guys have helped alot - thanks !
im gonna try out silverkeeper tonight - and see if the "firewire only" myth is true and get back to you guys
-chris

Yaja123
May 9, 2005, 11:52 AM
taken from silverkeeper help

"SilverKeeper 1.1 adds the ability to make a bootable backup of your boot drive. SilverKeeper will permit you to make a copy of your boot drive to another internal or external hard drive. Advanced users may also use a disc image file to make a single boot image of their drive. You cannot make a bootable copy to a network volume or to a PC-formatted disk. The external drive must be formatted with a Macintosh Extended volume (HFS+)."

Dm84
May 9, 2005, 11:57 AM
You can also install OS X on Unix File System, but Apple doesn't support it.Thanks for the info. Although I don't think I'll be formatting any drives in UFS.

hodgjy
May 9, 2005, 02:32 PM
Thanks for the info. Although I don't think I'll be formatting any drives in UFS.

No problem. I wouldn't recommend it either. I think Apple put it in for specific apps under X11 that might need UFS. I could be wrong...