Can't install Tiger on external drive

[afd]

Hi

I have recently been trying to install tiger onto an external firewire drive.
I formatted the drive, began the install process and everything went fine till the process finished with the 1st dvd. The computer restarts, shows a grey screen for a minute or so then starts up normally with the internal drive.
Anyone got any ideas?

I have a 2GHz G5 iMac with 1/2 GB ram and Tiger with everything up to date.

 

[janey]

you need to boot from the external drive. hold down option at startup and select the external drive.

 

[afd]

i think i have tried that, not sure though spent all of friday night getting nowhere. From what I remember holding down the option key just showed the internal and tho optical drives. I also tried making the external drive the startup drive with the startup pane in system prefs. Thanks for suggestion though will try it and let you know.

Alan

 

[Sly]

Use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy your main drive on to the external drive. Voila one bootable copy of 10.4 quick and easy.

 

[afd]

tried the above 2 suggestions, no luck. the external drive doesn't show when you startup with the option key. When I select the external drive as the startup drive there is a grey screen for 2 minutes then the mac starts up with the internal drive. when installing from the DVDs after the 1st one is finished I get the grey screen for a couple of minutes again then a startup from the internal.
It's as if my external drive is unable to be startup drive.

 

[Cleverboy]

tried the above 2 suggestions, no luck. the external drive doesn't show when you startup with the option key. When I select the external drive as the startup drive there is a grey screen for 2 minutes then the mac starts up with the internal drive. when installing from the DVDs after the 1st one is finished I get the grey screen for a couple of minutes again then a startup from the internal.
It's as if my external drive is unable to be startup drive.

Sounds like a simple answer. From your description, the only piece missing is what you did before you installed it. My bet is that, whether its that the drive was preformatted PC or it simply wasn't formatted as "bootable", if you choose "customize" during the installation process, and then choose the last option... It will WIPE the drive clean, set it to bootable, and sort out your problem. I'm pretty sure that will do it.

~ CB

 

[Cougarcat]

I'm having a similar problem with my Lacie Porshe drive. It won't recognize my Install DVD that I've restored to a partition, or my backup on another, when I press option at startup. When I got the disk I did wipe it clean via disk utility, so I'm not sure why it isn't bootable. I contacted Lacie, and they said that while all their drives are bootable, they can't support it and I should contact Apple...