How to boot linux or Windows DVD from external DVD-ROM with superdrive removed?

[rev.b]

I've got a crucial m4 and a "generic" optibay, where I put my Scorpio Black 750 gb. Best decision ever, my '10 MBP flies with it, and I've got all the hdd space that I need.

However, I didn't realize Mac EFI is NOT very friendly when booting from external DVD drives... OS X installation DVD works, but everything else doesn't - Gparted, Ubuntu live CD, Windows 7 DVD (for bootcamp).

I did search and find some old thread, and I guess it's a known subject... but from all the solutions suggested, I couldn't make them work.

I installed rEFIt, made a bootable usb stick, and so on, but nothing.

Any case of success "fooling" the MBP EFI to boot from another OS?

Thanks.

 

[pedrofan]

I've noticed the same.

 

[golgo1313]

i've been trying the same for a couple of weeks now...

refit, usb installer... nothing
can't seem to get the vmware fusion/winclone to work either
i haven't tried parallels/winclone, i guess that's next

i'm almost thinking of reinstalling superdrive to reinstall win7 into boot camp.

 

[Makie]

Try turning on the machine with the 'C' pressed, which should hopefully boot off the optical drive.

Not sure if the EFI has got anything to do with booting off a DVD, as when I had the harddrive removed it was booting from the Ubuntu CD normally as for a couple of days was just using the machine off the live CD.

If you are using Ubuntu you would have to use 10.04.1 or higher with a mbp.

 

[Makie]

i've been trying the same for a couple of weeks now...

refit, usb installer... nothing
can't seem to get the vmware fusion/winclone to work either
i haven't tried parallels/winclone, i guess that's next

i'm almost thinking of reinstalling superdrive to reinstall win7 into boot camp.

On Vmware in Ubuntu, previously installed winxp via an *.iso image instead of directly from the cd, you could try to see if that method works with win 7 with fusion.

 

[golgo1313]

i am able to install win7 in fusion, but i can't figure out how to take that over to the boot camp partition, so that i can boot natively into win7.

 

[rev.b]

On Vmware in Ubuntu, previously installed winxp via an *.iso image instead of directly from the cd, you could try to see if that method works with win 7 with fusion.

Yes, the external optical drive works just fine within OS X (and it even boots OS X installation disk) and of course to install something on Parallels or Vmware.

Problem is that Apple firmware seems to prevent booting other OS from external devices.

The catch. There's always a catch with ...

 

[tosehee]

I've spent nearly 3 weeks on this stupid issue, and end up putting the optical bay back to where it was.

I wanted to run ubuntu on the separate HDD, and I can't, for the life of me, figure it out how to install it.

I could swap back and forth to install more than 1 OS on the separate drive, but I am not too crazy about ubuntu to work around the hassle.

 

[rev.b]

Tried a bootable SDcard, does not work either.

How about network startup? What are the requirements for booting from a network drive? Something like remote install but with windows DVD?

 

[golgo1313]

i personally haven't tried it, but i've read that remote install doesn't work for windows.