Reformatted External HDD...now what?

[reubs]

I've reformatted my external into three partitions...on as an Apple Boot disk, one as an Apple data backup, and one for read/write MS-dos needed things.

Now I have two questions...how do I get the Apple Boot partition to have the necessary software on it for booting up from it to do disk repairs and such?

Second, is there a way I can have only the External Apple Data backup partition mount when I plug it in and turn it on?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Porco]

Firstly, You could either install your OS via the discs that came with your computer (perhaps doing a custom, stripped down install without all the printer drivers and languages for example), or, if you have the space and inclination you could clone your current boot drive to your external's Mac partition, using Carbon Copy Cloner or Superduper.

Of course, if you're using the external to boot from on a PPC mac, it needs to be a Firewire (or eSATA drive I think...? not sure about that... not USB anyway) if you're using a USB 2 drive on an intel mac, you need to make sure you told disk utilities to format the partition as a bootable one.

Overall, I think the easiest way is to clone your boot volume to the external partition and then check it boots up ok.

Secondly, um, I'm sure there must a way to only mount a certain partition, but someone else will no doubt chip in with a better explanation of how to do that than I could manage, not knowing off the top of my head.