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Booting from USB via Drawin Boot Loader

larrybird

By larrybird,
in OSx86 10.4 (Tiger)

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larrybird
larrybird
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I have a USB/Firewire drive that is detected in OS X and I want to boot from it so I can resize the partion on my laptop's internal HD. I copied the internal HD's image view Disk Utility as described in the Wiki FAQ's and that worked well. However, when I set rd=disk1s1 (my USB drive) as the boot image, the grey Apple screen loads, the wheel spins for a second, then the entire system crashes with the multi-language failure screen. Is there a way around this? Am I doing something incorrectly?

 

Also, I have discovered a minor problem. When I attempt to set my resolution through the Drawin Boot Loader prompt as 24 bit, the system profiler in OS X still reports the display as 32-bit. How can I find out if the system actually booted in 24 bit mode versus 32 bit? I'm looking for some form of confirmation.

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cyrana
cyrana
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Has anyone successfully booted from an external USB2 device?

 

http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/20...rives/index.php

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106474

That has been my experience as well, and now on a different setup w/just the USB2 drive, it won't boot. Locks hard w/the little spinning cursor in the corner.

 

Not sure on the 24 vs 32 thing...

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larrybird
larrybird
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Has anyone successfully booted from an external USB2 device?

 

http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/20...rives/index.php

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106474

That has been my experience as well, and now on a different setup w/just the USB2 drive, it won't boot.  Locks hard w/the little spinning cursor in the corner.

 

Not sure on the 24 vs 32 thing...

 

Oh, wait, OS X can boot from a Firewire drive though? I'll try plugging in that cable and see if it works. I figured if one worked so would the other.

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cyrana
cyrana
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Oh, wait, OS X can boot from a Firewire drive though?  I'll try plugging in that cable and see if it works.  I figured if one worked so would the other.

Yeah, but PPC Macs have hardware that natively supports firewire booting. I suppose maybe if the PC's BIOS had that option it might be a go. Mine doesn't I don't think but I'll goof around tomorrow and see.

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judy
judy
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Also, I have discovered a minor problem.  When I attempt to set my resolution through the Drawin Boot Loader prompt as 24 bit, the system profiler in OS X still reports the display as 32-bit.  How can I find out if the system actually booted in 24 bit mode versus 32 bit?  I'm looking for some form of confirmation.

Maybe your graphics card's BIOS doesn't have 24 bit modes. Type ?video at the boot prompt to see what modes are supported.

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larrybird
larrybird
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Maybe your graphics card's BIOS doesn't have 24 bit modes. Type ?video at the boot prompt to see what modes are supported.

 

It is visible in ?video mode. Frankly, it lists ranges that I know to be impossible (for the monitor) at least. The screen is XVGA (1024x768 native and max) but ?video lists all the way up to 1600x1200x32. I assume it lists 1600x1200 because the card can support that resolution, but the screen cannot. I tried booting in that mode anyway just to see if it would do a virtual screen or not, but it still booted in 1024x768x32. I'm going to try and boot at 320x240x8 and see what the does. If it's still 1024x768x32, then I'm afraid I'm stuck.

 

So, did we determine then that the System Profiler should say 32,24,16, or 8 bit under the "Display/Adapter" screen if it is running in that mode?

 

Also, is it possible to pass multiple resolutions through the prompt or through com.apple.Boot.plist? Under the control panel, only 1024x768 and colors of "millions" is available to me. I believe I heard others talking about how that is the only resolution available to them as well. Perhaps if you can pass multiple resolutions through the boot loader or Boot.plist the resolutions will be available under Displays in control panel.

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judy
judy
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From what I understand, the ?video list is just the list of all modes supported by the graphics card in VESA mode (which is hardcoded in the BIOS). When you choose one, the Darwin loader asks the card to switch to this particular mode, and I guess then the cards checks if the monitor can support that mode (via DDC), and if it can't, will return an error. Darwin then keeps trying every "lower" mode from the list one by one until one works.

 

Regarding muliple resolutions, don't know, might be worth a try to pass multiple Graphics Mode options.

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cstrippie
cstrippie
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Dunno where the two articles get their info: I boot exclusively from a USB 2 external drive. My normal method is to use the chain loader off the boot drive to boot the USB drive, but I can also set the BIOS to boot directly to USB, and this was the sole method I used before discovering the more convenient chainloader method.

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elisan
elisan
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my system is booting USB without problems, as well OSX86 as any other

OS.

(If your system can´t boot Windoze or Linux from USB it won´t boot

OSX86 either...)

 

I was just installing OSX86 (pearpc and vmware) native on my harddisk

while it was connected to IDE(PATA). After successfully configuring

Tiger hanging at the PATA, i tried to boot it from USB - was working

perfekt.

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  • 8 months later...
Dynamite
Dynamite
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I've successfully booted from a very old Maxtor mass storage 60Gb scsi device with a scsi to usb adapter on my imac G4. I used "cloneX" and/or "Carbon Copy Cloner" to clone my iMac's bootable volume to that new USB drive. (I wouldn't use CloneX or CCC anymore, use silverkeeper or superduper). To boot from the usb drive, i would hold down the alt key at startup and my USB drive would appear in the list!!

 

I've also booted on my iPod with my X86 system. (The maxtor drive was too slow, it didn't have time to be recognised by the X86 computer at startup). For that, I just installed OSX on the ipod plugged with USB using Myzar's 10.4.5 Install DVD (had to charge the ipod first because it's a 2nd gen one and USB doesn't charge it). Yes, I had both Firewire and USB plugs for my iPod. But I installed with USB because Installing With firewire caused errors when trying to boot the ipod. (I've got the PCI firewire Belkin card i added, works great in OSx86). So once the ipod had OSX installed, as my MoBo only supports USB booting, I had to boot through USB, just had to, firewire isn't a boot option. But When booting from USB, in the middle of the scrolling text of verbose mode, the loading stops with "Found a transaction that hasn't moved in 5 secons, timing out!" And stays there. And that's when I Pull my hair and I savagely unplugged my iPod from USB and plugged it to firewire and to my surprise, the booting simply continues as if nothing had ever happened!

 

O mercyful reader, believe me when i say It was easier to boot USB on the PPC mac and to boot from firewire on the X86 PC!

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  • 5 months later...
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