Firewire Boot Drive

[Macaddicttt]

So I just got an external Firewire drive and I want to be able to boot off of it incase something goes down on my internal HD. If my internal fails, I want to be able to carry on like normal, but using my external instead of my internal. How can I do this? I only have the system disks that came with my iBook, and they won't let me install onto the external drive. I tried just copying over all my system files and all that from my internal HD, but the Firewire drive was not recognized as a bootable drive. Does anyone know a way I can do what I want to do?

 

[Nermal]

What filesystem is your external drive using? It'll need to be HFS+ or else the OS X installer won't recognise it.

NB: I have absolutely no experience with this, I'm just guessing

 

[Macaddicttt]

What filesystem is your external drive using? It'll need to be HFS+ or else the OS X installer won't recognise it.

NB: I have absolutely no experience with this, I'm just guessing

Yeah, I made sure it was formatted as HFS+. I think the installer won't let me install it on the external because it was designed to only be installed on the iBook. It doesn't want you to go installing it on other computers. But thanks for trying.

 

[sandman42]

Use Carbon Copy Cloner (find it on Versiontracker.com) to copy your system from your HD to your external drive. I used it to make my iPod bootable. Worked great. I just bought an external drive today too, and I plan to use it to make copies of both my iBook and my Mini. I think I'll need to do those in separate partitions, in order to boot from the right one if/when the time comes.

 

[Macaddicttt]

Use Carbon Copy Cloner (find it on Versiontracker.com) to copy your system from your HD to your external drive. I used it to make my iPod bootable. Worked great. I just bought an external drive today too, and I plan to use it to make copies of both my iBook and my Mini. I think I'll need to do those in separate partitions, in order to boot from the right one if/when the time comes.

Worked like a charm. Thanks a lot. That's a handy little utility.