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OSx86 and SATA


deesto
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I've tried a few different install guides, and had success and failure to varying degrees installing OSx86 10.4.8 on an AMD CPU machine with a SATA drive. I don't think any of the installation images I found would recognize space on the drive as available; in fact, I resorted to installing on an external USB drive, which eventually worked well, but I could never get it to boot.

 

I've got XP (64 bit), Vista, and a few Linux flavors installed on this machine, all on the same SATA disk. It would be great to get a test-drive version of OSx86 to work, but I haven't had much luck finding info on SATA. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks!

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I can't seem to get Uphuck 1.3 installed on my Asus A8n32 Deluxe with an SATA hdd.

 

It boots fine, but freezes during installation. Does the same with a JaS 10.4.8 too.

 

Its probably the data corruption problem thats plagued NF4 users for a while.

 

Someone on here made a patch to get the installation to an SATA drive on NF4 working fine, but I can't find it (IIRC its in the Uphuck 1.3 thread).

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Good points. I didn't want to flood the post with unecessary detail, in case installing with SATA wasn't possible, but I ended up including way too little information in the process.

 

System: Gateway GT5426E

Motherboard: ECS MCP61-P AM2

Chipset: MCP61P, GeForce 6100 NVIDIA nForce 430

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 Processor X2 5200+

Disk (main): Hitachi 320 GB 7200 RPM SATA II

Disk (aux.): USB 250 GB

Memory: 2048 MB DDR2, 533 MHz, (PC4200)

More info: http://support.gateway.com/s/pc/R/1009452/1009452nv.shtml

Install DVD: I tried several; I think the one I had most success with was 10.4.8 Jas

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When I try to install on the SATA drive: I can't. The installation process won't read any partition on the drive as valid, available space.

When I install on an external USB drive: the installation succeeds, but after installation, won't boot.

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@samor,

the nf4/sata solution is in the Hardware/Drivers subforum: it's the thread with more than 119 000 views... it's title is self-explanatory.

 

@deesto,

that solution unfortunately doesn't work for nf430 mobo's.

since you have a desktop, a possible solution would be to get an ide drive: they're cheap enough these days, new or used.

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that solution unfortunately doesn't work for nf430 mobo's.

since you have a desktop, a possible solution would be to get an ide drive: they're cheap enough these days, new or used.

If it doesn't work for my mobo, would it still somehow work if I were to get an IDE drive? I don't know whether my current setup supports IDE drives, but if the installation would work, it would be worth my looking into.

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Another thing you could try (Which I'm currently doing) is try installing natively through vmware.

 

You basically set it up to use your whole hard drive instead of just an individual partition.

 

I'm sure theres a howto on here somewhere, but this could be a workaround for the SATA bug during installation. AFAIK this bug doesn't present itsself once installed... go figure.

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Many have reported corrupted data when writing on a sata on nf4/nf430 (when using osx).

The nf4/sata patch by medevil (in the post i linked above) solves that problem for nf4 users, but not nf430 ones. myzar and uphuck included medevil's patch in their respective install dvds.

 

If you get an ide drive and install osx on it, it should work as for many of us. Depending on the install dvd, you could still see the other sata drive, but again there could/would be a problem if you decided to write on it.

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I'll have to take my box apart again and check for IDE support... I don't remember seeing any IDE power connectors on the power supply last I looked. I could buy a new power supply w/IDE support and try that... but if the installation didn't work after that, I'd really be disappointed.

 

I'm a bit adverse to installing VMware... it's nice, but it's also kind of a beast and takes over a system to some degree: it installs devices, it runs processes in the background, etc. But again, if VMware is something that has a high degree of success and might work even on my system, I may just give it a try.

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If it's only because the power supply doesn't have the right power connection for an ide (which is surprising since there's a lot of ide's still on the market), then maybe you could find an adapter that could give the juice from the sata power cord to the pata.

As for an ide slot, you could share the one with the dvd drive at least.

 

As for vmware... I never use it for osx, too slow. But I use it for so many other reasons, couldn't imagine not having it on my pc.

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Hmmmm... get this: if I boot from the BIOS directly to my USB drive, my previous installation of OSx86 10.4.8 boots up... well, almost: I see the grey apple and the progress circle as it boots, and then it says "You need to restart your computer" (in multiple languages). Is it possible to resurrect an installation in this state? If so, maybe I could copy the partition to another drive and boot from there? Would be great if it might work on the SATA drive... but if that's not possible, maybe an IDE drive, if I can add one?

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some others have had success with osx on an external drive.

I'd like to try this myself eventually, but I don't have any external drive right now, so I'll let people familiar with this situation to help you.

 

or search this forum with appropriate words, eg "external osx", etc.

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I'm now actually wondering whether it might be worthwhile to copy or move the OSX partition from the external drive to an internal one (preferably the SATA, but I think I can do an IDE drive after all), or if the drive and partition are hard-coded into the partition during install.

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For your nf430 mobo, copying to the internal sata won't solve the data corruption problem.

 

In principle you can clone your osx partition from the external to an internal ide/pata, should work, as long as the boot sector was correctly written to your external. You could try it.

I use trueimage to clone, but you could use carboncopycloner, or Clonetool Hatchery (google it).

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For your nf430 mobo, copying to the internal sata won't solve the data corruption problem.

Didn't think so. That sucks.

In principle you can clone your osx partition from the external to an internal ide/pata, should work, as long as the boot sector was correctly written to your external. You could try it.

Maybe the fact that I can (almost) boot OS X when I select the external drive from the BIOS, means that the boot sector was properly written? I hope so.

I use trueimage to clone, but you could use carboncopycloner, or Clonetool Hatchery (google it).

Clonetool and Carbon Copy Cloner look neat, but they also seem to be Mac-only tools, and I don't have a Mac OS running just yet. I've been using GParted LiveCD to boot and edit partitions directly... I know it can clone partitions, but I'm not sure about cloning/moving the boot sector.

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Maybe people with experience on osx installed on an external partition can help you here, and you might avoid cloning to an internal.

Or maybe search this forum for posts about that situation. There are success stories about it.

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OK. Well, I tried to copy the installation from my USB drive to an IDE, but it seems that of all the file partition types, the only type GParted can't copy from disk to disk is HFS (mac).

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