DominicVautour
asked on
Booting from Firewire on a MacBook
I want to boot my MacBook from a Firewire Hard Drive. I am pretty sure it is simply a keypress on boot (similar to Boot Camp) however I have some questions and reservations.
1. The drive is formatted FAT32, will it boot this?
2. Will I lose any data on this drive?
3. I am booting a bootable DVD disc image (a .dmg), do I have to copy the entire contents to the root of my FW drive?
Thanks in advance,
Dominic
1. The drive is formatted FAT32, will it boot this?
2. Will I lose any data on this drive?
3. I am booting a bootable DVD disc image (a .dmg), do I have to copy the entire contents to the root of my FW drive?
Thanks in advance,
Dominic
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strung
P.S. If you boot while holding down the option key, this will bring up the Boot Driver Selector. If your firewire drive has a bootable system on it, it will show up in the boot selector.
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ASKER
I am going to try putting in another drive in my firewire enclosure and formatting it for Mac, then trying to get it working... will post info if I get it working.
That should work. Most, but not all firewire drives are Mac-bootable. Depends on the drivers or firmware for the drive enclosure. If it won't boot, check with the enclosure manufacturer for updated firmware.
ASKER
It is possible to install from an external firewire hard drive. However, using this method will wipe the drive, I had a spare 40gb so I used that.
1. Connect the external hard drive and turn it on.
2. Open Disk Utility.
3. Click on your external hard drive on the left.
4. Click the "Restore" tab.
5. In the Source box, drag the dmg image.
6. In the destination box, drag your external drive.
7. Check "Erase Destination" and uncheck "Skip Checksum".
8. Click "Restore" and wait.
9. When it's done, go in System Preferences, Open Startup Disk, Select the external drive and click "Restart".
10. Your system should restart and boot the external drive.
1. Connect the external hard drive and turn it on.
2. Open Disk Utility.
3. Click on your external hard drive on the left.
4. Click the "Restore" tab.
5. In the Source box, drag the dmg image.
6. In the destination box, drag your external drive.
7. Check "Erase Destination" and uncheck "Skip Checksum".
8. Click "Restore" and wait.
9. When it's done, go in System Preferences, Open Startup Disk, Select the external drive and click "Restart".
10. Your system should restart and boot the external drive.