Hi

I have an Intel MacBook Pro with OS X installed.

I have an eSATA ExpressCard (Sil3132 chipset) installed and it sees my external HDD just fine.

But, I would like to actually boot OS X directly from the eSATA HDD.

Is this possible?

What can I try to make this work?

PS. When I try and install OS X from the DVD it doesn't see the eSATA HDD, when choosing the install location.

I tried copying the Sil3132 .kext file to the System/Library/Extensions folder on the Install DVD and re-burning it. It didn't work of course.

Thanks
Martin

Isn't it possible in the OS X disk assistant utility to format any harddrive suitable for OS X installation, because perhaps that's the problem. Perhaps it's set FAT or something.

Thanks for the replies.

I have tried cloning an install to the eSATA disk, but It doesn't detect it when I boot.

I think the problem has to do with missing ExpressCard EFI drivers as mentioned on another thread here:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=198054

The eSATA disk is a lot faster than the internal SATA disk in the MacBook Pro, so I would really like to boot from it for my music production, hope there's a solution.

Hello!

if the 3132 card you have is raid then you might need to flash this to a base bios to make it bootable.

i suggest going onto siliconimage.com for more info.

Also slice and chun-nan maybe able to help you as they seem to know alot about PCI, PCMCIA + PCI-EXPRESS

Please let me know how you get on.

Cheers,

HC

Hi,

if anyone's interested: I have a MBP and added an eSATA card to it, and I wanted to boot Snow Leopard from it. When trying to install directly to the drive when connected to the eSATA port, the installation fails. But having it connected with a USB cable works fine. After the installation and the first reboot, I replugged it via eSATA and it now works perfectly! I now have a perfect Snow Leopard install on an external RAID0.

What I'm now going to do is to try to set my user account up that it actually accesses the user folder on the internal drive. I'll see if that works.