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My Hackintosh Build

StrungOut420
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StrungOut420
StrungOut420
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I've been reading through these forums for months now, and after attempting (not succeeding) to install OSX86 on my HP DV9074CL, I've decided it was time to build my next machine.

 

Here are my potential specs:

My goal is to have a dual-boot machine (OSX on one drive, Windows Vista or 7 [64-Bit] on the other), in which my day-to-day stuff would be done on the OSX side, and my business stuff (mostly AutoCAD, Revit & SketchUp work) would be done on the Windows side. Yes, I know that I can run SketchUp on the OSX side.

 

Any thoughts, comments, suggestions, etc... would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!

 

*Edited video card, because I found a better one...

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Zaap
Zaap
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Not much to say- those stats should work great.

 

I'd recommend going with a retail install and Boot-132. Using two separate drives for the OS's is a definite plus.

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StrungOut420
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...I'd recommend going with a retail install and Boot-132. Using two separate drives for the OS's is a definite plus.

 

So should I install OSX first, or a flavor of Windows first? I'm guessing it doesn't matter because I'd be catching the machine before it booted from the hard disc...

 

Any suggestions as to a bootloader?

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Zaap
Zaap
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So should I install OSX first, or a flavor of Windows first? I'm guessing it doesn't matter because I'd be catching the machine before it booted from the hard disc...

 

Any suggestions as to a bootloader?

Here's how I recommend doing a classic dual boot setup with 2 hard drives, with built-in failsafe redundancy for good measure.

First off, find a good guide for your motherboard, preferable retail Boot-132, and Chameleon.

 

1. Mount both hard drives in your case- attach one to SATA port 0 and physically 'mark' it as the Mac OS drive so you'll know it by sight from the other. Attach your optical drive to SATA port 1. Mount the second hard drive in the case, attach it to SATA port 2, but leave the power connection unattached for the moment.

2. In the BIOS, set boot drive order as 1. CD-ROM, 2. Hard drive. Boot OSX (I'm going to assume the boot-132 method) go into disk utility, and format the Mac drive with two partitions OSX Extended Journaled, and using GUID from the options. Choose whatever sizes you want, just leave room for TWO complete installs of OSX, requiring 6GB each- IE: MAC1 400GB, MAC2 100GB.

 

3. Install OSX on MAC1. Set it up according to a good guide, (IE install needed kexts, download updates etc.) until you have a fully working/updated OS, and your graphic card fully accelerated. Install Chameleon as the bootloader to Mac1.

 

4. Install OSX AGAIN on MAC2. (Conversely, you can clone the install of MAC1). Same thing- set it up, get it working. You won't need to install Chameleon again, because it will now boot either partition.

 

What you now have is two complete installs of OSX. Keep one (MAC2) completely pristine- you can also use it to install a backup set of must-have applications. You can select either to boot using the arrow keys at the Darwin prompt. If you want to do some questionable update, tinker with something, or you accidentally end up hosing MAC1 somehow- you can repair/restore, retrieve data, continue mission critical work, etc. with the backup MAC2 install. It's well worth at least 10-20GBs of disk space for this form of built-in failsafe. Why more people don't do it, then come here complaining how they hosed their ONLY OSX install, is beyond me.

 

 

Anyway, onward to dual boot:

 

5. Power off the machine, and hook up the 2nd hard drive. Boot into OSX again- the system should immediately complain that an unformatted disk has been inserted. Use Disk Utility to again create two partitions, one DOS format, and one OSX Extended Journaled, and use MBR (Master Boot Record) from options. Again, pick the sizes according to your needs, IE: WINDOWS(DOS): 250GB, STORAGE(OSXEJ): 250GB. (The second partition is optional if you just want to use the entire disk for Windows, but the point here is to use a 2nd partition on drive 2 as an internal Time Machine drive for the Mac.

 

6. Power off the machine, and now REMOVE the Mac drive from power. (This is why you need to know which is which).

 

7. Unattach all card readers, USB thumb drives, etc. With the Windows drive being the ONLY hard drive in the system, boot the Windows install CD and choose the WINDOWS (DOS) partition- reformat it to NTFS (quick) and install Windows. The Windows installer has annoying habits, like writing it's bootloader to a primary drive other than the install drive, and assigning every other drive/USB key, card reader slot, etc in a system as C: OTHER than the drive being installed to- so to avoid any chance of all that, just remove everything else. Most important is that you don't let Windows installer have any chance of screwing with your MacOS/Chameloen setup.

 

8. After installing Windows, set up all the drivers for it. Go to MY COMPUTER and NAME your C: drive something like, "WINDOWS". Power down the system and reattach the MacOS drive. Go into your BIOS and now select the perfered default boot drive- Drive1 for Mac, Drive2 for Windows.

 

9. When you boot the machine, with Drive1 as default, the machine will now boot into OSX same as before. Now in OSX, you will see the WINDOWS drive (not natively writeable- if you named it in step 8, it'll have the name, otherwise it will be called 'untitled') and STORAGE partition on your desktop. You can open TimeMachine and have it backup whatever you select to the STORAGE partition. Because it's a separate disk, you've got the redundancy of a 2nd hard drive backup.

 

10. With any Gigabyte motherboard, if you then want to switch and boot into Windows, hold down F12 at boot. When the boot selector appears, scroll down to hard drive, and select Drive2. Now you'll boot into Windows- it's a working dual-boot system.

 

That method works great if you don't mind the F12 boot selector. If you want a more graphic bootloader, you can try installing Chameleon 2 RC1 (Google it). Currently, it's in beta, but I've tried it on my systems and it works pretty good. It can definitely boot OSX and Vista from 2 different drives, from a clean graphic menu. In the above setup, you could install it over the original Chameleon setup on MAC1.

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StrungOut420
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Wow Zaap! Thank you so much for your write-up! I truly appreciate it.

 

And you've got a really good point about that setup... why not build in the redundancy?! It is a great idea--one which I will implement...

 

My only question is this: Being a bit of a Leopard noob (I've only ever gotten to play with Tiger), can I setup Time Machine to backup my system to a Windows Home Server? I've built a WHS from some spare machines I had in the basement, and it actually works really well. It backs up all my computers without a hiccup, and I plan on using it on the Windows-side of my system. I've read that there is compatibility with OSX and WHS, but I'm not sure if it's done through Time Machine or through a Mac version of the WHS Console.

 

I'm assuming that you can set Time Machine's setting to backup to whatever folder (on whatever drive/computer on your network) you want?

 

This way I can have WHS/Time Machine do my OSX backups, and WHS do my Windows backups...

 

Also, I see in your sig under "Main Hack", you've got a machine similar to mine in terms of RAM and Processor power. So I gotta ask, how's it run? Is it unbelievable?? I'm upgrading to that build from a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 with 2GB of RAM, so I expect to see a major difference, but I'd still like to hear your opinion.

 

Once again, thank you very much for the install guide... I should be good to go once I get all the hardware in house and put together.

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Zaap
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My only question is this: Being a bit of a Leopard noob (I've only ever gotten to play with Tiger), can I setup Time Machine to backup my system to a Windows Home Server? I've built a WHS from some spare machines I had in the basement, and it actually works really well. It backs up all my computers without a hiccup, and I plan on using it on the Windows-side of my system. I've read that there is compatibility with OSX and WHS, but I'm not sure if it's done through Time Machine or through a Mac version of the WHS Console.

Honestly, I'm not sure about WHS. TimeMachine is pretty picky about what it will backup to- mostly Apple seems to have crippled it to work only with Mac-formatted drives, and the Time Capsule and such. I hacked mine using some guide online to allow it to backup to my Linux-based NAS box, using a 'sparce bundle' hack- but it was a bit convoluted, and sometimes unreliable enough to make me stop using it.

 

There probably is other third-party Mac backup software to back up to WHS, but I'm not up on it. How do you like WHS, by the way? I've been toying with the idea of building a machine from the myriad of spare parts I have laying around to try it out. I mainly have been craving a NAS box I can also long into remotely and use a GUI that lets me burn backup DVDs- something I dislike that I can't do with my Linux NAS. (Clarkconnect- no GUI).

 

I'm assuming that you can set Time Machine's setting to backup to whatever folder (on whatever drive/computer on your network) you want?

TM is pretty limited, both in what it will backup (local OSX formatted partitions) and backup to.

 

Also, I see in your sig under "Main Hack", you've got a machine similar to mine in terms of RAM and Processor power. So I gotta ask, how's it run? Is it unbelievable?? I'm upgrading to that build from a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 with 2GB of RAM, so I expect to see a major difference, but I'd still like to hear your opinion.

I'm extremely happy with my machine. It performs as fast as a single-processor Xeon MacPro. (I use one at work every day.) I run Final Cut Pro, Motion, Photoshop, etc. every bit as fast as my work machine. I've built over a dozen Hackintoshes all told (for friends, clients, etc.) and the Gigabyte ones are always my favorites. They're always rock-stable and usually require the least tinkering. It's been my experience that tinkering (IE: too many patches/boot flags needed, BIOS tinkering, etc)= most possibility for instability in a Hackintosh.

 

The DQ6 replaced the DS4 (HTPC) board I used to use as my main system: the DQ6 is excellent for Hackintosh (and Windows) but if I were choosing a setup today, I would go with a UD3x board, probably the UD3P. Not that there's a thing wrong with my DQ6, just that the only real difference is that the DQ6 has a lot of extras- and those are mostly things I don't really need, IE: a PCIe x8 slot, quad(!) ethernet, 10 SATA ports (only using 4) etc. etc.

 

The newer UD3x boards have the same FSB, and even max out with higher speed RAM. (1366 vs 1200). Also the 2oz copper PCB and improved Japanese capacitors used on the UD3 series really are great improvements.

 

So you'll have a machine that's faster and better than mine, because your board is just as good if not better, and that 9550 processor kicks all kind of ass, above and beyond the Q6600!

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