littlemoog Posted April 8, 2006 Share Posted April 8, 2006 From what I understand, OSX is happy to run on an external drive, my only worry is that I won't be able to actually boot it because AFAIK my lappy's BIOS doesn't understand USB mounts and therefore won't be able to boot it. Do I have any other options? Is grub/wingrub able to mount usb drives to get around this? Thanks for any help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
valosx86 Posted April 8, 2006 Share Posted April 8, 2006 don't know for all, but my laptop (toshiba) doesn't boot on usb, but grub can ! so I boot under grub then boot on my usb drive ! one day I will test it with firewire ... would be better ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willvg Posted April 8, 2006 Share Posted April 8, 2006 whats your grub list showing right now, i mean as far as the setup Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
littlemoog Posted April 9, 2006 Author Share Posted April 9, 2006 I haven't actually installed GRUB on my lappie yet, it's just a vanilla WinXP install on the built-in HDD formatted as a single partition. The reason I'm asking about this is I just spent a day re-installing XP on my lappie and don't want to have to re-jig the partitions on my HDD to make a /boot partition for OSX to boot from. Actually, not sure if OSX supports doing the Linux-style /boot + / separation thing ... Sounds like GRUB understands USB mounts though, so I guess I can use that do boot the entire OSX install off the USB drive ... can anyone confirm? Thanks for the help thus far. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willvg Posted April 9, 2006 Share Posted April 9, 2006 yea i cant get my grub to boot usb Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poisson37 Posted April 18, 2006 Share Posted April 18, 2006 Can anyone please reply as to their grub settings if they have been able to boot from the USB installed OSX? I have been trying everything and googling for ever and I cannot seem to get it... I've tried the hd1 and sd0 and sd1 NADA - I know that my bios sees the usb hard drive and is capable of booting off an image on USB, however the installation of OSX does not render the drive bootable to the BIOS and I blessed the drive while it was an internal drive .... I am pulling my hair out! Anyone? Thanks in advance... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
littlemoog Posted April 18, 2006 Author Share Posted April 18, 2006 Just FYI ... I've looked into it and there's no USB support built into any variant of GRUB per se, i.e. if your bios doesn't directly support booting from USB then GRUB won't help you out. If your BIOS does support booting from USB you should be able to make it work though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poisson37 Posted April 19, 2006 Share Posted April 19, 2006 @ littlemoog: Thanks for your help. My BIOS DOES support booting into a USB drive as long as it sees it as bootable, per se its boot sector being 'bootable' 80 etc. however when my HDD is plugged in via USB it is not somehow 'rendered' BIOS bootable and hence the problem I am faced with persists... while plugged in locally it boots wonderfully. Is there some way then to render this HDD as 'BIOS BOOTABLE' others seem to be doing this, where is the magical solution? This DD thing? I've heard many things regarding this meathod. Will this DD work with an already compiled DMG backup or only the IMG? Convert my DMG to IMG? --- Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! My MOBO is an Asus Punit R and seems to support USB Booting... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
opq Posted April 20, 2006 Share Posted April 20, 2006 My bios does support booting from USB. Strange thing is though when I boot a drive with OSX only I installed natively, the thing freezes while loading up. Anyone else having these problems? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poisson37 Posted April 20, 2006 Share Posted April 20, 2006 For the rest of you with the same problem as me a possible solution: As an IT professional I feel rather embarrassed by why my External USB HD didn't boot: PLUG IT INTO THE RIGHT USB PORT AND NOT ON AN EXTERNAL HUB! Yes, this was my problem all along - my MOBO supports booting however it cannot be something connected to an external USB HUB and must be connected DIRECTLY to the port and consequently must be one of the ports located in the front of the machine.... I am wondering if I get a PCI USB card if it will still support booting a USB HDD from there!?! Any experienced users with the answer? Thanks again to all... My HDD boots OSX 10.4.5 very well and no visible drag in speed - no problems at all; just as if it were plugged in locally. I am a happy camper Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bolger Posted May 10, 2006 Share Posted May 10, 2006 All things mentioned above didn`t help for me. I successfully installed 10.4.3 on a USB-Disk, but it won´t boot (BIOS USB boot options switched on, external HDD disabled). However, it does boot when plugged in directly as internal HDD. When booting from the Mac OS x86 install disk, the usb disk is not listed under the bootable devices in utilities. Is there any way to boot an external usb drive via boot manager or cd/dvd? I read something about enabling usb legacy support in bios, I will try this tonight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gatot Posted June 16, 2006 Share Posted June 16, 2006 so guys ... has someone successfully booted from the external drive? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony H Posted August 16, 2006 Share Posted August 16, 2006 My problem is exactly the other way around. I wan't to run OSX on my company laptop, which has strikingly similar hardware to the new MacBook. But since it's a companies, I can't install OSX on the internal harddrive. My AMD64 desktop system at home can install on, boot from and run nicely from my USB harddisk. My Toshiba (T2500) laptop seems to boot from USB, but the OSX installer can only see the DVD drive and the internal Harddisk, and NOT the external USB drive :-( Anyone any suggestion? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
huxley1 Posted August 16, 2006 Share Posted August 16, 2006 Just a couple of things I have seen with running OS X on an external USB drive 1. I had to boot off the DVD, run the installer, disconnect the USB drive and reconnect at the time of selecting the disk!! (even now I sometimes boot through Darwin and then have to disconnect and reconnect the USB drive for it to boot fully to OS X) 2. After installing on the USB drive it seemed to knock out the "active" partition part (and therefore would not boot) so I had to go back to XP and set the USB drive as active using diskpart after the install of OS X. Other than that it seems OK, running on an IBM Thinkpad T42p (VGA only graphics and no wireless). Very nice OS!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davesworld Posted August 16, 2006 Share Posted August 16, 2006 New to forum, but thought I'd pass this along. I was a bit bummed when loading 10.4.6, I couldn't see my NP9890 (from Sager Computers) SATA drives due to the controller being a WinXP Promise SATA378 variety. I saw the USB drive topic and tried loading onto a USB drive. Success! Networking worked, tho haven't tried the sound card yet. I had it muted on the WinXP side and will try un-muting and running Mac. May still be an issue. Have not tried the wireless yet, tho the wireless listed is 802.11g MiniPCI Wireless. Will update when more info available. Additional Info: SOund not working, Wireless not working and trying to find drivers for NVid 6800 Ultra. Will try anther forum on that. Thanks for the good thread! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shock Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 T43,ide2usb,seagate 5400rpm 10G, a primary partition for HFS after installation,use disk-genius to active the partition reboot,select the usb hdd to boot a little bit slow than internal one Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony H Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 I give up! There's no way I get to see the usb drive in the target selection menu in the OSx installer ;-(( This is really strange, because the same Installation disc and the same usb drive were no problem at all for my desktop AMD64 system. After imaging my internal drive on the USB drive, I'm going to give installation on the internal drive with a BootMagic a chance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fidoboy Posted October 5, 2006 Share Posted October 5, 2006 T43,ide2usb,seagate 5400rpm 10G, a primary partition for HFS after installation,use disk-genius to active the partition reboot,select the usb hdd to boot a little bit slow than internal one What is 'disk genius'?? where can i find it? Also, i have a strange behaviour, if i boot from install DVD and then wait until the countdown ends, i can boot to OS X installed in my external USB HDD...:S Thanks in advance, .:FiDo:. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuXb Posted October 5, 2006 Share Posted October 5, 2006 Also, i have a strange behaviour, if i boot from install DVD and then wait until the countdown ends, i can boot to OS X installed in my external USB HDD...:SDo you mean the countdown in the Darwin Bootloader? But when it ends it will boot the DVD. If I press F8 in the DVD's Darwin Bootloader it will ONLY display Mac OS on the install DVD. I don't quite get wha tyou are experiencing there. Which install DVD are you talking about there? Also, do you have a second install of Mac OS x86 on your internal HD? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tecnoworld Posted October 6, 2006 Share Posted October 6, 2006 How can I activate a partition that is not NTFS, with a WinXP tool? I installed the MacOS x onto an external drive, but it won't boot. I can select the drive from the BIOS, but it says to insert a system disk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fidoboy Posted October 6, 2006 Share Posted October 6, 2006 Do you mean the countdown in the Darwin Bootloader? But when it ends it will boot the DVD. If I press F8 in the DVD's Darwin Bootloader it will ONLY display Mac OS on the install DVD. I don't quite get wha tyou are experiencing there. Which install DVD are you talking about there? Also, do you have a second install of Mac OS x86 on your internal HD? No, i only have Windows XP on my internal HDD and OS X 10.4 on external USB drive. The DVD i was talking was OS X 10.4.6 Jas install DVD. It sound strange, but that's the way that it work. I put DVD, computer boots from that DVD, after waiting for the countdown, the system boots and i get my OS X installed in the USB drive... If i not use that DVD the system hangs at boot showing only a letter L at the bottom. Today i've solved that and i don't know exaclty how, i've installed 10.4.8 by Jas patch, and also using fdisk i've marked that partition as active... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuXb Posted October 6, 2006 Share Posted October 6, 2006 How can I activate a partition that is not NTFS, with a WinXP tool?I use Partition Magic for that, either from Windows or from DOS. I have the little DOS version installed on my DOS partition which I access through Windows XP Bootloader once my computer switches on (amongst many other helpful DOS tools .. ). Also you can use boot CDs or floppies to boot PM. Just make sure you use PM 8.05, versions before that are a bit incompatible with our mixed partition setup (HFS+, NTFS etc.). Just emule for partition magic 8.05 - you will find tons of it (the little DOS CD bootimage is totally sufficient). When PM starts it always says 8.0 but under "about" it telly you the correct versioning. PM 8.05 has the advantage that it automatically detects partition errors on startup and opts you to repair them for you, which always worked for me. No, i only have Windows XP on my internal HDD and OS X 10.4 on external USB drive. The DVD i was talking was OS X 10.4.6 Jas install DVD. It sound strange, but that's the way that it work. I put DVD, computer boots from that DVD, after waiting for the countdown, the system boots and i get my OS X installed in the USB drive...well that's not what you call "booting your install", it is INSTALLATION .. . You can endlessly install OS X, no matter if on USB or IDE/SATA, by booting the install DVD .. If i not use that DVD the system hangs at boot showing only a letter L at the bottom. Today i've solved that and i don't know exaclty how, i've installed 10.4.8 by Jas patch, and also using fdisk i've marked that partition as active... well you just answered that question - didn't have anything to do with JaS 10.4.8 update but with marking that partition active .. Cheers, Bugs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tecnoworld Posted October 7, 2006 Share Posted October 7, 2006 BugsBunny : I tried with PMagic 8.05, but it says the disk space is "unallocated"!!! why's that? macdrive can see I have my mac files on it... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuXb Posted October 7, 2006 Share Posted October 7, 2006 Then it is formatted in a wrong way, it should be yellow in PM and the partition ID needs to be AF ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tecnoworld Posted October 7, 2006 Share Posted October 7, 2006 BugsBunny : please consider I'm not using a partition on the external drive, but the whole drive is devoted to MacOSx (it's just a 20GB mobile disk) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts