Using a single firewire SSD to boot both an imac and mbp

[vendo67]

If I have a SSD enclosed in an firewire case can I use the same hard drive to boot both the MBP and the iMac?

 

[JediMeister]

I think that would be possible if the drive was split into two partitions. I do not think you can use a single unified partition to boot both systems however.

 

[BrianRecchia]

I think that would be possible if the drive was split into two partitions. I do not think you can use a single unified partition to boot both systems however.

Well, you cannot have two computers accessing the same FireWire drive at once, so if you are planning on plugging one computer into each port that will NOT work. But otherwise there's absolutely no reason why you can't boot your iMac off it and then when you wanna go out plug it into your MacBook Pro and boot that off it, instead. As long as the iMac is an Intel machine and you have at least the version of Mac OS that came with the newest computer installed (meaning, if the MacBook Pro is one of the new models from last month you need to use the DVD that came with it, as it's running a later build of 10.6.3 – 10D2094) then every driver for every Intel Mac is on that drive.

No need to split partitions, either. You could even put one Mac in Target Disk Mode and plug a FireWire cable into another Mac and use one as the other one's hard drive to boot it.

 

[vendo67]

I work with a MBP at the office and I go home to an imac. It's a pain making sure both machines are running a similar set up. So it would be great to carry a hard drive around rather than dragging the laptop around.

Sounds like a really good solution for anyone else with multiple macs in different locations.

Thanks Brian, I'll do a bit more research on which firewire enclosures to get.

 

[spinnerlys]

Firewire will "only" give you a maximum speed of around 70MB/s, so an SSD might be really wasted on this. All current HDDs (5400RPM and 7200RPM) will give you 75 - 100 MB/s.

 

[vendo67]

True, the Firewire will slow down the SSD. However, a firewire SSD will always be faster than a platter hard drive since there is no seek time.

I haven't actually bought an iMac yet, I just have a hackintosh right now. I'm deciding whether I should go with a Mac Pro or iMac. It will depend if the next Mac Pro is a rip off or not.

 

[kyleh613]

I would really consider putting the SSD in one of the computers instead. Going off a firewire connection really is a bad idea because the whole point in buying an SSD is for its performance gain. It makes more sense to just buy one for each computer.

 

[iamsilvermember]

What you want to do will work fine because it is what I am doing.

I put a hard drive into an enclosure and installed OS X inside, and I can boot up using this external drive I created on both my Mac Pro and Macbook Pro!

Very handy as a drive to fix computers!

 

[Sensamic]

I dont understand what spinnerlys is saying. An SSD in a firewire enclosure will always be faster than an HDD on the same firewire enclosure. Its pure logic.

 

[BrianRecchia]

I dont understand what spinnerlys is saying. An SSD in a firewire enclosure will always be faster than an HDD on the same firewire enclosure. Its pure logic.

Not exactly. A hard drive has seek times. An SSD does not. But throughput, which happens to be the main selling point of an SSD, will not actually be increased.

However, an SSD is a lot more durable than a hard drive (it's essentially a giant flash drive) so I'd certainly prefer an external SSD than an external hard drive just for durability's sake.

 

[spinnerlys]

I dont understand what spinnerlys is saying. An SSD in a firewire enclosure will always be faster than an HDD on the same firewire enclosure. Its pure logic.

I may have not considered the seek times, as external HDDs are more for storage of large amounts of data, like SD and HD video (compressed and uncompressed), in my mind, thus my comment on the throughput of raw data.

 

[Sensamic]

An SSD in a firewire enclosure will obviously lose some of its power, but it will still be faster than a 7200rpm internal hard drive, right?

At least, that is what I have read many times from people who own a SSD in a firewire enclosure and use it as boot drive.