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Installing OS X (Intel) on an external firewire drive?

M

mr breaker

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 17, 2006
11
0
Not sure which category this should be posted in...


I have an Intel mac mini. I am using an external Firewire drive that has two partitions on it. Previously I had 10.4 (PPC) installed on one of the partitions using my old G4.

Now I'd like to do a clean install of OS X (intel) for a backup on the drive. When I start up from the Install disc it shows me the drive, but it says it can't install onto it because it's not a bootable disc.

But I can boot up from the OS X (PPC) install that is currently on it. Is this a software issue, or do I need to change the way the jumpers are set on the external drive?

The drive is a:

Western Digital Caviar RE WD3200SB 320GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive


Thanks!
 
Can't you just clone it over onto the partition with SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner or unpackage the install disks with Pacifist? This interests me as I have a Mini on order.
 
Hmm... I don't know then... maybe it's some firmware thing...?

Or, if you're using the restore disk that came with the mini, maybe you need a retail Tiger DVD to install OS X on an external drive, that the DVD sees that it not a mini and refuses, sort of speak...?

Edit: Cloning, using the above mentioned apps, or SilverKeeper, sounds like a good idea... :)
 
Mitthrawnuruodo said:
Hmm... I don't know then... maybe it's some firmware thing...?

Or, if you're using the restore disk that came with the mini, maybe you need a retail Tiger DVD to install OS X on an external drive, that the DVD sees that it not a mini and refuses, sort of speak...?

Edit: Cloning, using the above mentioned apps, or SilverKeeper, sounds like a good idea... :)
Click to expand...


Problem is that Tiger Install disks are at the moment PPC and I believe cannot boot in conjunction with MacMini?
 
I also created an image of my current 10.4 installation on the mini and tried to restore that onto the exteranl firewire drive...but it kept erroring out.

I guess I'll play with the jumper settings on the drive and see what happens.



I do have a retail Tiger disc...I'll do some testing with that as well...although my guess is that it won't install from the intel mini.


If anyone else has suggestions, I'd appreciate it. I'm trying to get my installation backed up so I can install XP!
 
I got this reply from another forum, I think it's useful so I'll repost it here:


You have to reformat the whole disc, because the disc is formatted with an Apple Partition Map (APM), which is what the Mac OS has always used up until the Intel Macs. Unfortunately, the Intel Macs can't boot from a disk with an APM - they need to be formatted with a GUID Partition Table (GPT). Of course, GPT disks won't be able to be read by any Mac OS version earlier than Tiger. Isn't that great?
Click to expand...
 
Here is what you are looking for...

This is easier said then done. You can’t just boot off the System Installation DVD — that’s where you run into the “You cannot install Mac OS X on this volume. Mac OS X cannot start up from this volume.” blocker. Instead, you need to install onto a different partition on your internal hard drive. Once installed, use Disk Utility’s “Restore” tab to perform a block-level from the internal partition to the “Intel” partition.
Click to expand...
 
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