BladeRunner Posted September 29, 2006 Share Posted September 29, 2006 I have searched these fora, google, altavista, etc.. looking for data on booting an external firewire drive. I have also tried two different External enclosures with a Maxtor 120GB drive. Mostly, I can't even get them recognized by the System Preferences -> Startup Disk utility. At this point, I don't know if it is the Enclosure, HDD or partitioning scheam that is causing the problem. I have tried GUID, APM and MBR otions when partitioning the drive. I have also cloned my boot partition using the asr/bless commands and CC Clone. Nothing works. If anyone has made this work I would sure appreciate some help/advice. I have seen comments that not all firewire chip sets support booting. Problem is, I can't find which vendors use which chip sets. Then again, maybe it's the way I am building the partition on the drive. TIA for any and all help. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/28888-firewire-boot-advice/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rammjet Posted September 29, 2006 Share Posted September 29, 2006 Startup Disk is not used on a Hackintosh. I don't think a Hackintosh can boot Firewire drives, only USB drives. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/28888-firewire-boot-advice/#findComment-198144 Share on other sites More sharing options...
BladeRunner Posted September 29, 2006 Author Share Posted September 29, 2006 Rammjet: Startup Disk is not used on a Hackintosh. I don't think a Hackintosh can boot Firewire drives, only USB drives. I appreciate the quick reply. Still, it leaves me a bit confused because I had been reading that OS X didn't boot from USB and I would need a FireWire connected drive. The adaptec enclosure I have is both USB & FireWire so I switched the connection to try again. If it's not one of those Just Because type answers, why don't we use Startup Diak? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/28888-firewire-boot-advice/#findComment-198246 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rammjet Posted September 29, 2006 Share Posted September 29, 2006 PPC Macs boot from Firewire. Intel Macs and Hackintoshes boot from USB. PC's have BIOS PPC Macs have Open Firmware Intel Macs have EFI Apple only made Startup Disk compatible originally with Open Firmware and then later, EFI. It doesn't know how to get info from BIOS. That is why there is so much "talk" in these forums about "bootloaders" which manage what partitions you boot from. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/28888-firewire-boot-advice/#findComment-198249 Share on other sites More sharing options...
BladeRunner Posted September 29, 2006 Author Share Posted September 29, 2006 @Rammjet: OK. Thanks. That clears up several things. I appreciate it very much. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/28888-firewire-boot-advice/#findComment-198373 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trico Posted October 20, 2006 Share Posted October 20, 2006 Hello, I got an external firewire enclosure and installed osx86 on it (I also have it on my internal hd). It's connected through a cheapo pci firewire card. I can boot from it with boot options: mach_kernel rd=disk1s1 Hope this helps Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/28888-firewire-boot-advice/#findComment-213480 Share on other sites More sharing options...
BladeRunner Posted October 21, 2006 Author Share Posted October 21, 2006 @Trico I can boot from it with boot options: mach_kernel rd=disk1s1 *yes* - thank you - that helps a LOT! I just tried it and was able to boot from partitions on both firewire & usb drives. That gives me an external system with utilities and backup images. Really appreciated. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/28888-firewire-boot-advice/#findComment-213626 Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuXb Posted October 21, 2006 Share Posted October 21, 2006 Interesting. Rammjet I am as stunned as you are. So Trico you use the darwin bootloader of your internal install to type "mach_kernel rd=disk1s1", hit Enter, and your firewire install boots. I just tried that, at least it starts to boot from Firewire but then: panic(cpu 0 caller 0x002B66B9): nfs_boot_init failed with 6 Both HDs, xt and int, are set up the same way: 1: FAT32 DOS boot partition with chain0 + NTLDR active 2. Mac OS x86 on HFS+ .. more Partitions setting the hackint0sh partition active does not change anything. I have similar problems if I boot form my xternal drive via USB, which is only possible if I hide my internal Mac OS x86 partition with Paragon Partition Manager, then Mac OS x86 on USB starts up just fine. Which OS x86 installs do you (Trico & BladeRunner) have on your HDs (int & xt)? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/28888-firewire-boot-advice/#findComment-214010 Share on other sites More sharing options...
BladeRunner Posted October 21, 2006 Author Share Posted October 21, 2006 @BugsBunny, My internal HD is Jas-10.4.7 install dvd + Jas-10.4.8 Intel-Combo-SSE3 update (see sig). The external USB is a 300Gb Maxtor drive in a cheap external case. It has Jas-10.4.7 install DVD - no updates. I installed it for a test/maintenance system. I had a system on the firewire drive - also maxtor - but it is no longer there. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/28888-firewire-boot-advice/#findComment-214032 Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuXb Posted October 21, 2006 Share Posted October 21, 2006 So I guess on your internal you at least have a non-hfs boot partition? But your external only consists of one hfs partition? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/28888-firewire-boot-advice/#findComment-214043 Share on other sites More sharing options...
BladeRunner Posted October 22, 2006 Author Share Posted October 22, 2006 @BugsBunny, My internal has three partitions. One small one for OSX 10.4.7 used to fix my mistakes. One larger used as my main OSX 10.4.8 boot partition and one used to boot Linux. Maxtor 6Y160P0: Capacity: 149.05 GB Model: Maxtor 6Y160P0 Revision: YAR41BW0 Serial Number: Y471DP2E Removable Media: No Detachable Drive: No BSD Name: disk0 Protocol: ATA Unit Number: 0 Socket Type: Internal OS9 Drivers: No S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported Volumes: OSX-Maintenance: Capacity: 9.32 GB Available: 1.03 GB Writable: Yes File System: Journaled HFS+ BSD Name: disk0s1 Mount Point: /Volumes/OSX-Maintenance OSX-Boot: Capacity: 69.72 GB Available: 51.97 GB Writable: Yes File System: Journaled HFS+ BSD Name: disk0s2 Mount Point: / The external USB 2.0 drive was also partitioned under linux and contains three partitions. /dev/disk1s2 93G 3.1G 90G 3% /Volumes/USB-OSX-Boot /dev/disk1s3 93G 43M 93G 0% /Volumes/USB-OSX-Data /dev/disk1s4 93G 43M 93G 0% /Volumes/USB-OSX-Spare Don't know if I answered what you were looking for??? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/28888-firewire-boot-advice/#findComment-214139 Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuXb Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 Thanks BladeRunner for the details - which might help me to narrow down why my sys behaves strange in this matter. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/28888-firewire-boot-advice/#findComment-214223 Share on other sites More sharing options...
BladeRunner Posted October 22, 2006 Author Share Posted October 22, 2006 I had reported earlier that I could boot from both USB & FireWire using the "mach_kernel rd=diskxxx" parameters. Then I got to questioning if I had reported correctly since the FireWire drive is a dual connect USB/FireWire enclosure. To be sure, I did the following test. First verified that the FireWire drive was in fact connected via the FireWire cable. Second, made an image of the boot partition on the USB drive and then restored it to the "osx-backup" partition on the FireWire drive. Then I restarted the system using rd=disk2s3. The system booted from the FireWire drive. I ran "df -h" and saved the result. Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/disk2s3 65G 37G 27G 58% / devfs 103K 103K 0B 100% /dev fdesc 1.0K 1.0K 0B 100% /dev <volfs> 512K 512K 0B 100% /.vol /dev/disk0s1 9.3G 8.3G 1.0G 89% /Volumes/OSX-Maintenance /dev/disk0s2 70G 23G 46G 33% /Volumes/OSX-Boot automount -nsl [198] 0B 0B 0B 100% /Network automount -fstab [202] 0B 0B 0B 100% /automount/Servers automount -static [202] 0B 0B 0B 100% /automount/static /dev/disk1s2 93G 3.1G 90G 3% /Volumes/USB-OSX-Boot /dev/disk1s3 93G 43M 93G 0% /Volumes/USB-OSX-Data /dev/disk2s2 50G 23G 27G 46% /Volumes/OSX-Data The /volumes/OSX-Data partition is on my FireWire drive (disk2s2) and you can see that the system is booted from disk2s3. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/28888-firewire-boot-advice/#findComment-214242 Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuXb Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 All right, thanks for retrieving and posting all the information. I was gonna dig into this today but the weather was waaayy too great, even went swimming in the lake again (mid October Fön - awesome!). So next weekend at the latest ("aufgeschoben ist nicht aufgehoben" .. ) Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/28888-firewire-boot-advice/#findComment-214559 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trico Posted October 23, 2006 Share Posted October 23, 2006 @BugsBunny Hi, My internal drive has only one partition (10.4.8). My external drive has two, the first with 10.4.4 and the second is also HFS+ (used to backup purposes). Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/28888-firewire-boot-advice/#findComment-214825 Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuXb Posted November 12, 2006 Share Posted November 12, 2006 hey guys, thanks for all the hints, IT IS WORKING !!!! with rd=disk1s2, because on my USB drive Mac OS x86 is on the second (primary) partition. So now I do not need to hide the partition with my main install anymore. Awesome !! Cheers, Bugs. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/28888-firewire-boot-advice/#findComment-232718 Share on other sites More sharing options...
huedrant Posted January 29, 2007 Share Posted January 29, 2007 hi! nice that you already figured that out! i'm still working on that. I get the promt to enter the "mach_kernel rd=" thing only if i insert the DVD. any suggestion how i can get the prompt when booting from my HDD? i wrote about this issue in this topic as well: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...mach_kernel+rd= Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/28888-firewire-boot-advice/#findComment-288132 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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