erbic Posted August 22, 2006 Share Posted August 22, 2006 I can't install OSX86 on my internal hard drive(s) because they're in a SATA RAID array. And the SATA controller doesn't seem to be recognized by System Profiler. Putting a PATA hard drive in my computer is out of the question simply because my motherboard has only one IDE channel. (Dell XPS, Dell-branded motherboard). And both positions are taken up by optical drives. So my only option ATM is to use a PATA hard drive I have lying around inside a USB enclosure. A few questions about this. 1. Should I have any problem installing OS X86 onto said USB HDD? Will I need to do anything special to make the installer "see" it? 2. Once installed, will the Chain0 solution work to boot OSX? I already have XP Home and Vista beta2 dual booting on my RAID array. Does Chain0 still link properly if OSX is on an external USB HDD? 3. How serious is the performance loss from a USB HDD? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/25457-usb-hard-drive/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
abbub Posted August 23, 2006 Share Posted August 23, 2006 I have it installed on a generic external USB drive, with a 20 GB hard drive. I have no problems booting into os x, either through selecting the usb drive as the primary hard drive to boot from in BIOS, or by using chain0 on my xp partition. I had no problems with disk utility seeing the drive... The Jas disk install didn't want to boot off of it, for some reason, but the HotISO (both 10.5.6) distribution worked fine. I can't really answer the performance hit question. I haven't really had a chance to try running it on an internal drive on a real box, with 'good' hardware. This USB install is Project Gemini. (Mercury was getting OS X running in VMWare, Apollo begins next month as I begin piecing together a 'real' hackintosh...) This is on a MSI K8N Neo Platinum, by the way... Now, if I could only get my Radeon 9200 to work at something better than 1024x768. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/25457-usb-hard-drive/#findComment-172444 Share on other sites More sharing options...
erbic Posted August 23, 2006 Author Share Posted August 23, 2006 Good, thanks. I'm probably going to buy a Thermaltake USB enclosure for my HDD and install on there. Hopefully the Myz build I have will boot from it, since I really don't want to spend a few hours torrenting another build of this. I know I'm going to have some problems once I get it booting, like my Creative internal sound card, but I should be able to deal with having no sound. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/25457-usb-hard-drive/#findComment-172541 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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