Help! Installing Leopard on a PB w/ broken drive

Unfortunately, between PPC and Intel based systems, the Firewire mode of install will (usually) fail.

The following method may work (assuming the 10.5 disk is a RETAIL/black disk):

1. Using FW targe mode, mount the PB, use Apple Partition Map, create two partitions (one big and one about 10GB), format both to HFS+.
2. On the MBP, ceate an image of the install disk (using disk utility).
3. After the image is created on the MBP (an hour or so), still using the disk utility, RESTORE the image to the 10GB partition on the PB's disk (mounted firewire in step 1).
4. Turn everything off, disconnect FW cable, boot the PB with the OPTION key held down. If will most likely give you the option to boot from the 10GB partition, and you can install to the bigger partition.

Later, you can delete the small partition and expand the installed partition to fill the disk if you prefer.

Good luck.

 

First, hats off to BobZune for one of the few concise and accurate posts on how to install Leopard on a PB with a broken combo drive. I followed his recipe, and with a few tweaks, it worked like a champ. Here's a recap of BZ's instructions with a few missing steps / gotchas thrown in. Note: Even though "PB" refers to a PowerBook (PowerPC) and "MBP" refers to a MacBook Pro (Intel), this approach should work for any pair of machines, even with different architectures.

1. Boot PB into target mode. (How: hold 'T' key down while booting. It should come up with a firewire logo bouncing around the screen.)
2. Connect PB to MBP via firewire cable. (You should see "Macintosh HD" mount on the desktop of MBP)
3. Create a 10GB partition on PB. (How: Launch Disk Utility on the MBP. Select the "nn GB AAPL Firewire..." volume in the left hand column. Click Partition tab. Click [+] icon at bottom of Volume Scheme. Set size to 10GB and apply.)
4. Quit and re-start Disk Utility. (You should now see TWO partitions under "nn GB AAPL Firewire..." volume list, probably labeled Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD_2)
5. Insert Leopard Install disk on MBP.
6. Create a .dmg image of the Leopard Install disk. (How: In Disk Utility, select Mac OS X Install DVD in left hand column, click on New Image+ at top. Save it to (for example) the desktop on the MBP.)
7. Verify the .dmg image in preparation for restore. (How: in Disk Utility, select Mac OS Install DVD.dmg in lower left-hand column, then click Images => Scan Image for Restore.)
8. "Restore" the .dmg disk image to your newly created 10MB partition on the PB. (How: in Disk Utility, click on the "Restore" tab. Under Source, click "Image" button and select the .dmg image from the desktop. Under Destination, drag the icon for Macintosh HD_2 from the left hand column into the destination field. Turn on "Erase Destination". Click "Restore". Go out for a cup of coffee.)
9. Boot the PB from the new .dmg image. (How: Unmount the Firewire volume from the MBP. Unplug the firewire cable from both machines. Power down the PB. Power up while holding the [OPTION] key. The PB should show you two bootable volumes -- select "Mac OS X Install DVD" and click on the "=>" icon.)
10. Proceed with a normal install.

Note: You can leave the .dmg image on the second partition and boot from it if you ever want to do another clean install. If you're confident you won't need to do another clean install, you can go back into Disk Utility and delete the second partition to reclaim the 10GB of space for the primary disk partition.

Hope this helps someone.

- ff

 

FF -- thanks for the detailed description - and for the compliment!