making my external my start up disk

[CHC]

Hi
I want to load 10.3 on my external drive and use it as a startup/backup.
I am having problems loading the os from disk. it keeps starting over after the first dik finishes. Mac gurus help please
Hc

 

[yellow]

Is your external a firewire drive?

Why not just clone your existing boot disk to the external?

 

[CHC]

help

Yes it's a firewire. How do I clone it?

Is your external a firewire drive?

Why not just clone your existing boot disk to the external?

 

[wrxguy]

Yes it's a firewire. How do I clone it?

I would like to know this as well

 

[yellow]

Look for SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. The rest is, as they say, cake.

 

[Ti_Poussin]

install Mac OS X on the HD, or copy it with command line or with Carbon Copy cloner. Select it in the preferences panels Startup disk. Or you can old the T key while booting for a firewire drive (target mode, should work). If any of those work, your HD doesn't support booting.

 

[Ti_Poussin]

to clone with the command line, I have already explain it over here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/146544/

 

[yellow]

Select it in the preferences panels Startup disk. Or you can old the T key while booting for a firewire drive (target mode, should work). If any of those work, your HD doesn't support booting.

Slight correction here..

Holding down the t key for Target mode is for booting a Mac into target mode for use as a firewire device on another computer. To select a different start up device at pre-boot from your Mac, hold down Option and once it's done scanning the bueses, you can select other boot devices and start from there.

 

[YS2003]

setting up a start up disk on the external HD

So, to set up a start up disk on the external firewire HD, do you install the Tiger DVD on that external HD and format it Mac native format HFS+? For making the exact carbon copy of the Mac to the external HD, you can use SuperDuper. But, I would like to make sure if I understood correctly as far as setting up a start up disk on the external HD so that I can boot from that HD to run various disk utilities such as Disk Warrior (as you cannot run those utilities on the start up disk).

 

[yellow]

The disk has to be HFS+. You can either completely reinstall OS X from the DVD onto the drive, or you can clone your current boot drive to it. Either way, doesn't matter. Ultimately, it'll be easier and smarter to clone, as that also functions as a rudimentary backup of your boot drive.