Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Boot 10.5.3 from USB?

Nermal

Nermal

Moderator
Original poster
Staff member
Dec 7, 2002
21,514
5,411
New Zealand
Is it possible to boot OS 10.5.3 from a USB drive? I have an MBP and have tried to set this up twice now with no success. I can install 10.5 and boot with no trouble, but after updating to 10.5.3 the boot freezes at the Apple logo.

I've tried booting in verbose mode and there's a rather suspicious-looking entry a few lines before it freezes. I don't have the exact text on hand but it's something like "too much activity on USB hub 1, this hub will be reset in 10 seconds". Is the OS yanking the boot volume before it's finished booting? :eek:

Has anyone successfully booted 10.5.3 from a USB drive?

Thanks :)

Edit: I'm having the same problem with 10.5.2!

Edit 2: Here are the last few lines of my latest 10.5.2 boot attempt. Note that the "too much activity" message didn't appear this time.

Code: 
BSD root: disk1s2, major 14, minor 5
CSRHIDTransitionDriver::switchToHCIMode legacy
USBF:   3. 51   CSRHIDTransitionDriver[0x602d300](IOUSBCompositeDevice) GetFullConfigDescriptor(0) returned NULL
CSRHIDTransitionDriver... done
Jettisoning kernel linker.
Jun 11 12:46:54 localhost fseventsd[28]: bumping event counter to: 0x1e6571b (current 0x0) from log file '0000000001e656f3'
Jun 11 12:46:56 localhost DirectoryService[33]: Launched version 5.2 (v514.4)
Jun 11 12:46:56 localhost DirectoryService[33]: WARNING - dsTouch: file was asked to be opened </Library/Preferences/DirectoryService/.DSIsRunning>: (File exists)
 
Do a FULL reformat, Erase and Install, also use Disk utility that comes with your Leopard Disc. Before doing that, do a PRAM reset, maybe it will help
 
Sorry, this may come across as rude, please don't take offence. My question was not "what should I try?" but rather "has anyone had it working?". I've had a look online and have found other people with the same problem, so I'm trying to find out whether it actually works at all, instead of spending time on a problem that's not solvable.
 
Do you mean boot from a USB "thumbdrive" or from a usb-connected hard drive?

I've done the latter, just used superduper to copy my main system to the USB drive, and then it became an option on startup if I held the option key down.
 
bplein said:
Do you mean boot from a USB "thumbdrive" or from a usb-connected hard drive?

I've done the latter, just used superduper to copy my main system to the USB drive, and then it became an option on startup if I held the option key down.
Click to expand...

It's a proper 200 GB hard drive. You've had it working? I can see it if I hold Option and it boots partway before freezing. Did you have 10.5.2/3 installed? A plain install of 10.5.0 works fine but I run into problems after updating to 10.5.2 or .3 (I haven't tried .1).
 
Sorry, I haven't tried it yet with 10.5.3 (which was the main thrust of your question).

Have you tried using SuperDuper (assuming you have room). It will make a full copy, not a base install, but it would be a good test.

What filesystem are you formatting the USB drive with? And partition type?

If you are using an Intel-based Mac, you need a GUID partition table on the drive, and I would use the standard filesystem (Mac OS X extended, journaled, not case sensitive) in order to keep it simple.
 
I haven't reformatted the drive as I don't want to lose some of the stuff that's on there. It's definitely GUID, Journalled etc though; I just double-checked in Disk Utility to make sure.

It's now a bit of a moot point for me because I've installed the OS onto another drive (not USB, I partitioned my internal drive this time) but still an interesting problem :)
 
I appreciate that this is now a moot point for you, but I had a similar issue with 10.5.2 (I think). I thought I'd try again with 10.5.4. I want a backup, as I don't trust my Mac to be always bootable if an install goes wrong :)

However, after installing 10.5.0 and upgrading to 10.5.4, the boot process still hung. This time I was able to boot into single user mode, CMD+S at the Apple logo. The logs looked fine, so I exited single user mode and to my surprise it continued to boot into OSX. Great. Now every time I boot it works OK, very strange.

I now have a working OSX backup solution in case my main drive is trashed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back