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Boot Drive in Optical Bay

L

liquidtension89

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 3, 2011
11
0
Hey guys, this is my first post, but I lurk here about once a week or so. It seems to be an extremely active forum so I know someone can help answer this.

I got a 60GB SSD to put in my MacBook Pro to only run Pro Tools on Snow Leopard. The reason for this is because I use it live for my band and I believe the vibrations on stage are what is causing my HDD to screw up and trigger some error messages in Pro Tools.

I removed the SuperDrive and put the SSD in it's place. How can I use this as a boot drive for Snow Leopard without using the HDD at all. Is this possible? This is all very new to me. Thanks in advance.
 
are you trying to replace your HDD with a SSD? or adding the SSD as primary with the HDD as extra space, Im sorry I didn't understand.
 
I think he means running OSX + Protools on the SSD. Whatever on the main hdd is irrelevant I think.
Is it possible to have two instances of OSX on separate drives and boot them up on the same machine though? I'd imagine it'll be possible if you swap drives, but doing it every time wouldn't be so convenient.
 
Yeah, my HDD is sort of irrelevant I guess. I will use the HDD with Lion as my everyday system. The SSD is only for Pro Tools when we play live.

I know it's possible to have OSX on a drive and Windows on another. I'm not sure about two versions of OSX. I hope someone can clarify and explain.
 
liquidtension89 said:
Yeah, my HDD is sort of irrelevant I guess. I will use the HDD with Lion as my everyday system. The SSD is only for Pro Tools when we play live.

I know it's possible to have OSX on a drive and Windows on another. I'm not sure about two versions of OSX. I hope someone can clarify and explain.
Click to expand...

So you want to have SL on BOTH drives? Or SL on the SSD and the HDD is just blank (or used for data storage?). If you can be more clear and explain exactly what (and why) you are trying to do it would help. Your question should be fairly easy to answer.

Either way, you just need to install SL on the SSD. Do you have an external CD drive?

How big is the SSD? If you don't have an external drive to install SL from, you can clone the old HDD to the SSD (if the SSD is big enough).
 
As I said in my previous post, I'll be using the HDD with Lion as my main system. The SSD is 60GB. The SSD is for running Pro Tools only. I'd like the HDD to not be active (if possible) while doing this. I need the stability of only a SSD with the large amount of vibrations on stages.

And unfortunately I don't have an external optical drive at this time. I hope to convert the SuperDrive into an external later, though.
 
liquidtension89 said:
As I said in my previous post, I'll be using the HDD with Lion as my main system. The SSD is 60GB. The SSD is for running Pro Tools only. I'd like the HDD to not be active (if possible) while doing this. I need the stability of only a SSD with the large amount of vibrations on stages.

And unfortunately I don't have an external optical drive at this time. I hope to convert the SuperDrive into an external later, though.
Click to expand...

Oh, sorry. Must have missed that. So you want the SSD to only have SL+Pro Tools?

Then you will need to either borrow a external CD drive or have a friend create a USB drive with the installer on it.

Once you do that, its super simple. Just boot off of the installer disk and install SL onto the SSD.
 
See, I tried that. I made a .dmg of the SL installer, put it on an external, then put it on the SSD. I tried running it, but it tells me to burn the installer on a DVD. I probably did something wrong, I've never done it before.
 
liquidtension89 said:
See, I tried that. I made a .dmg of the SL installer, put it on an external, then put it on the SSD. I tried running it, but it tells me to burn the installer on a DVD. I probably did something wrong, I've never done it before.
Click to expand...

When you say you put it on the SSD, what do you mean? Did you just copy the installer to the SSD? Or did you boot off of the external, and run the installer directing it at the SSD?
 
Explain how to do the latter, please. Like I said, I've never done it before.

Also, I don't have that external with me right now, unfortunately. Is it possible that I can use Remote Disk with my iMac? Put the SL install disk in the iMac and run it from my MBP? I've got Remote Disk up and running and I tested it a CD with some pictures on it.
 
Last edited:
liquidtension89 said:
Explain how to do the latter, please. Like I said, I've never done it before.

Also, I don't have that external with me right now, unfortunately. Is it possible that I can use Remote Disk with my iMac? Put the SL install disk in the iMac and run it from my MBP? I've got Remote Disk up and running and I tested it a CD with some pictures on it.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately you can't do it via remote disk. There is another way you could do it...do you have a firewire cable or USB cable lying around that you could use to connect your two computers together?
 
lionheartednyhc said:
Unfortunately you can't do it via remote disk. There is another way you could do it...do you have a firewire cable or USB cable lying around that you could use to connect your two computers together?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately the only firewire cables and USB cables I have are for going to devices, so no. I can get a USB cable pretty easily of course (not willing to spend the money on a firewire cable right now). What are you suggesting I do?

And if you don't mind, explain how to do it with the external as well.
 
Last edited:
liquidtension89 said:
Unfortunately the only firewire cables and USB cables I have are for going to devices, so no. I can get a USB cable pretty easily of course (not willing to spend the money on a firewire cable right now). What are you suggesting I do?
Click to expand...



I was wrong, you can't use USB for this. Has to be FW.

1. Boot the laptop into FW Target Disk mode (turn off, hold down the T key and turn back on. Keep holding T unit you see the firewire logo).
2. Plug laptop into iMac via Firewire
3. You should now see both the SSD & HDD on your iMac, as if they were external hard drives plugged in.
4. Run the SL installer on your iMac. Direct it at the SSD.

That should do it.
 
lionheartednyhc said:
I was wrong, you can't use USB for this. Has to be FW.

1. Boot the laptop into FW Target Disk mode (turn off, hold down the T key and turn back on. Keep holding T unit you see the firewire logo).
2. Plug laptop into iMac via Firewire
3. You should now see both the SSD & HDD on your iMac, as if they were external hard drives plugged in.
4. Run the SL installer on your iMac. Direct it at the SSD.

That should do it.
Click to expand...

How would you do it with an external hard drive? I can more easily obtain this.
 
lionheartednyhc said:
I was wrong, you can't use USB for this. Has to be FW.

1. Boot the laptop into FW Target Disk mode (turn off, hold down the T key and turn back on. Keep holding T unit you see the firewire logo).
2. Plug laptop into iMac via Firewire
3. You should now see both the SSD & HDD on your iMac, as if they were external hard drives plugged in.
4. Run the SL installer on your iMac. Direct it at the SSD.

That should do it.
Click to expand...

Ok, sorry for not being very good at this, haha. I tried the Firewire Target mode. I've got both my drives showing on the desktop of my iMac. Now when you say "Run the SL installer on your iMac. Direct it at the SSD." what do you mean by that? Do I drag the SL install DVD to the SSD or what? When I do that and try to run it, it says, "Mac OSX 10.6 cannot be installed on this computer."
 
If you have the Snow Leopard installer on a DVD you should boot up from that DVD and follow the on screen directions, making sure to select your SSD as the install destination.
 
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