Running two Tiger installations

[techlectics]

I have a Mac Pro and am having several annoying problems. I'm new to Macs and I probably messed up my installation so I would like to start from scratch and reinstall Leopard on a brand new drive. Here's my question.. I would like to remove the old drive from bay 1 and replace it wit the new drive. After I install Leopard on the new drive can I put the old drive in the currently empty bay 4? Will I then be able to boot into either drive? The reason being that until I get the new installation configured properly and all my applications reinstalled, I may need access to the old installation. If this scenario will work, how do I select which volume to boot at start up?

 

[dbam987]

I want to say that you could just hold the "alt" key on startup so that it will show you the bootable volume's. Then you can choose which drive to boot from from there. This works with Boot Camp...

 

[Roy]

I have a Mac Pro and am having several annoying problems. I'm new to Macs and I probably messed up my installation so I would like to start from scratch and reinstall Leopard on a brand new drive. Here's my question.. I would like to remove the old drive from bay 1 and replace it wit the new drive. After I install Leopard on the new drive can I put the old drive in the currently empty bay 4? Will I then be able to boot into either drive? The reason being that until I get the new installation configured properly and all my applications reinstalled, I may need access to the old installation. If this scenario will work, how do I select which volume to boot at start up?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1310

I have 10.4.11 installed on my internal hard drive and 10.4.11 installed on my external hard drive. I update one drive, and if everything seems to work, then after a few days I will update the other drive.

 

[dbam987]

Ah, so I was mostly right. The "alt" key is the same key for the "option" key. Thanks for the link Roy.

 

[Sun Baked]

For a critical work machines, running two OS installs works real well for the time when you need to make sure an update doesn't take down a machine.

Allows you to instantly go back to the older OS with a simple reboot, or boot into the other drive to perform repairs on the main drive.

 

[techlectics]

Thanks

Thanks everyone for the quick replies. One more question... If I put the drive in an external firewire enclosure, would I be able to boot from it?

 

[Roy]

Thanks everyone for the quick replies. One more question... If I put the drive in an external firewire enclosure, would I be able to boot from it?

My external hard drive has a USB and a Firewire port. I have my external hard drive hooked up via the Firewire port. I can boot via the Firewire port on my external hard drive.

 

[dbam987]

Yep, you certainly can choose to boot from a firewire drive. That's a big plus with Mac OSX. I think the same is true with Windows Vista... it's all about the BIOS/EFI. EFI is used in Mac machines, and I'm certain it will work. For machine's with BIOS chips on the motherboard, it all depends on the board's manufacturer. Most boards these days do support booting from a variety of devices.