Only Firewire harddisk is bootable?

[Hakkinen]

Hi,

I have search the forums and so far only 2 persons mentioned that only Firewire harddisk can be cloned to make a bootable OS X. And there is only 1 person who said USB harddisk can do the job too.

I have bought a Maxtor 200GB harddisk and a USB2.0 enclosure. No matter what softwares I use to clone my ibook, i cannot get the external harddisk to boot.

So now I am wondering if by changing the casing to a firewire and USB2.0 combo can help solve the problem.

 

[zaphoyd]

use firewire

As far as i know USB cannot be used to boot the computer. The manual on one of my drives that has both FW and USB2 says that USB cannot be used to boot.

Seriously though, why USB at all? If you are using it for a Mac OS X boot disk it must be formatted in a way that only a mac can read it anyway. What mac won't have firewire? Firewire is also daisy chainable so you don't loose the FW port adding a drive like you would with the USB. Besides, 99% of FW drive enclosures I have seen have both FW and USB2... I don't see any compelling reason to have USB2, much less ONLY USB2, aside from a potentially $10-$20 cheaper price

 

[Hakkinen]

Well, at first I bought that external hard disk for backup purpose. Then I realise I could actually use it as a bootable hard disk too. Took me a long time to search the forum that USB cannot be used to boot the computer.

Also, there are very few mac users outside USA. Almost everyone is using PC. So most vendors do not sell firewire enclosures.

I am going to sell my maxtor 200gb and USB enclosure to my brother. So now I got a choice to decide between Maxtor, Western Digital and Seagate.
By the way, all 3 brands of hard disk can be used to book the computer right?

Thanks for your advice

 

[zaphoyd]

the brand of hard disk does not matter for booting purposes.