Lifehacker SL guide, G31M-ES2L, USB HDD instead of flash

[juzza]

Hi all,

 

Long time reader first time poster - I plan on writing a guide as soon as I get this thing running to help everyone else after learning heaps from you guys, but I had a few questions before I begin.

 

My current motherboard has poor compatability with OSX (Asus P5K-C) so I have ordered a Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L (hoping very much that it's 1.x revision and not 2.x) and am waiting for that to arrive.

 

I plan on using the Lifehacker guide with iDeneb after I get the new motherboard as a OS X system to prepare the 10.6 installation data but I wasn't sure of a few things:

 

1. I don't have a 8GB+ USB Flash drive though I do have a 120GB USB SATA HDD, can I use this instead of a flash drive as mentioned in the tutorial and if so would the process be the same?

 

2. The guide is for a different motherboard than the one I'm getting by a pretty large degree (GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P), G31 vs my old P35 though I checked on the HCL though and the G31M-UD3P has pretty good out of the box compatability, at least the rev 1.x's - will I be able to follow the guide or will I need to use one with the boot-132 method - recommendations for a guide would be appreciated

 

3. Would I need to flash the BIOS with a modified one to help everything happen smoothly (happy to do so but couldn't find any info)

 

4. It's not possible to upgrade from a distribution like iDeneb or iAktos to SL, is it?

 

System will be:

Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L

Core 2 Quad Q6600

ATI HD4850HD 512MB

PCIe 1x SATA card

4x SATA hard drives

1x SATA dvd burner

4gb ddr-800 RAM (64 vs 32 bit issues?)

 

All answers, tips and suggestions greatly appreciated

[sk1nhead]

try this one instead, just replaced the 8gb usb drive with your 120gb external HD.

 

http://www.infinitemac.com/f57/guide-retai.../post31269.html

 

everything will work on your REV2.0 ES2L board except for the LAN. hth

[juzza]

sk1nhd33t thanks for the link, I will use that guide as I have a better feeling about it than the LH one... just one more quicky question since my experience with kexts and retail installs isn't that great; would a system installed with that guide be updatable because it has kexts or would the kexts get broken? (I don't know how kexts work in relation to the system).

 

I'm planning to use 32bit, is this wise or would you recommend 64bit?

 

I know with distro's it's hard to update and don't plan to use a distro ever again except to prepare the SL installer.

 

Thanks for your time