Bootable Hard Drive

i can't remember which os allowed for usb boot. but if it does then carbon copy does work as i have used it to clone my drive. and i have booted form usb before. but i just don't remember how far back i could go 10.7 10.6?

i do think 10.6 will work ok.

what mac are you using?



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usb 2 is fine. it will be of course slower then putting the drive in the comp.

USB2 should work fine. I had a 2007 white polycarbonate MacBook that came with 10.5 and which I later updated to 10.6. I was able to boot from an external USB2 drive with either OS using the clone option.

Appropriate versions of CCC or SD should do what you want. But be patient - the USB2 drive will not boot nearly as quickly as you currently do from your internal HD.

Regarding enclosures. There were some issues back then with some drive enclosure controller chips not working reliably to boot. I don’t remember what the preferred chip was but I don’t think Seagate drives had this issue.

willie45 said:

I'm not sure if I'm making it clear or not. I want to use an external disk which connects to the computer via USB cable. It says on CCC site and also on SD site that not all disk "enclosures" ( not sure what this means TBH) allow macs to boot from them.

If I made a bootable disk I could try it. I suppose that's the only way to do it eh?

The iMac in question is a White Polycarbonate 2007 model

Click to expand...

edit. oh it's the white model? i think it can work. i have never tried. and i think the highest os is 10.6? i am sure someone can confirm. also that model has been known to have capacitor problems.


edit. this was written first.
yes that is exactly what i am talking about. you want to boot off an external like it was your main drive. i have also put the os on a usb flash stick though it was much slower. i dont know which brands work better. but all the ones i have tried. toshiba and wd. all have worked.

OP:

Of course you can use CarbonCopyCloner and create a bootable drive via USB2.
The bootup will be slower than "from internal" because of USB2, but it should still boot.

I suggest using CCC version 3.4.7 (the last free version).
You can find it here:
https://www.bombich.com/download.html

Note:
DISREGARD the comment on bombich's page that you need a later version of CCC to work with Snow Leopard. Version 3.4.7 will work JUST FINE...

(Try it and see)