So I recently received an iBook G4, which has been fairing pretty well so far. It's a Mid-2005 model, 1.32 GHz, has Tiger installed, and I maxed out the RAM at 1.5 GB. The DVD drive as far as I know doesn't work (scared to try and test it), and I wanted to install Leopard. I picked up a 1 TB Western Digital My Book Studio so I could restore a Leopard retail disc dmg and then just install from there. Everything went well when restoring the dmg to a partition I made on the drive, but then when I choose that partition as my startup disc and restart the computer, it reboots with the flashing question mark proceeding to just boot back into Tiger. I've tried erasing the data on the partition and then restoring the image again, but still no luck. I'm really at a loss here as to what I'm doing wrong.
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iBook G4 doesn't boot from firewire drive
- Thread starter SunshineMellow
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Is the HDD formatted like the following guide shows you to?
Pay attention to step 4 (GUID is the partition map scheme for Intel Macs, if you us this guide for a PPC Mac, use "Apple Partition Map" as explained in the screenshot.) and choose "Apple Partition Map" there.
You can also use CarbonCopyCloner to clone a DMG to the external HDD.
Pay attention to step 4 (GUID is the partition map scheme for Intel Macs, if you us this guide for a PPC Mac, use "Apple Partition Map" as explained in the screenshot.) and choose "Apple Partition Map" there.
You can also use CarbonCopyCloner to clone a DMG to the external HDD.
Yeah I made sure the drive was formatted using the Apple Partition Map and even formatted again just to make sure. I might try CarbonCopyCloner to clone the dmg just to see if it'll make a difference.
Okay so I just tried a DVD of the Avengers, and surprisingly it does work! This is actually pretty cool. I was just afraid of it swallowing of my disc without any return. The only funny thing is that because the drive can't push out the CD on its own, I have to tilt the iBook so that gravity will allow the disc to fall out. Now I just need burn the Leopard dmg to two DVD's? If you guys have a good tutorial on burning dmg's to a DVD, that would be awesome.
Ah okay thanks! I still wish I could figure out why the hell I can't boot from the external drive...
I have to do that with my Dual-Layer PowerBook. I got it used from eBay and it was dropped on the right corner.
I don't believe you need a DL Superdrive to burn a DMG. You do need one to burn a DL DVD though.
I have Toast 9, but I've found that burning DMGs is best left to Disk Utility, especially so when you are burning a DMG to a DL DVD. So, I'd give Disk Utility first shot at this.
It's likely to be the case that your WD drive doesn't support booting a PPC Mac. See my post in this previous thread and the linked support document from WD.
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/16163281/
Well crap! I have the My Book studio edition and it's listed as not bootable. Man I wish I would've known that before dropping $100 on it. It's pretty nice and all but yeah that's unfortunate. Thanks for the info.
I have a good iBook superdrive if you need one. Yeah, the My Books don't boot. Try to return it.