Tekel Posted September 21, 2007 Share Posted September 21, 2007 K, I am wondering if anyone has had any problems with booting OSX to a external USB hard drive and running from it? I would like to keep XP intact on my current drive and use a external drive to try and avoid any problems with Dual booting. With the clean install off OSX would it recognize the USB Drive or would it continually attempt to read my internal? In bios is it possible to set a USB drive as primary boot drive so the CPU first attempts to read it instead of my internal? I am restarting right now to investigate. Any insight into installing on a external drive would be appreciated. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/63981-osx-on-external-drive/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davejb Posted September 21, 2007 Share Posted September 21, 2007 K, I am wondering if anyone has had any problems with booting OSX to a external USB hard drive and running from it? I would like to keep XP intact on my current drive and use a external drive to try and avoid any problems with Dual booting. With the clean install off OSX would it recognize the USB Drive or would it continually attempt to read my internal? In bios is it possible to set a USB drive as primary boot drive so the CPU first attempts to read it instead of my internal? I am restarting right now to investigate. Any insight into installing on a external drive would be appreciated. Whether or not you can boot to a USB device depends on your motherboard, newer ones can, older ones cannot. What I would do, rather than what you are planning, is to install a second internal drive, disconnect you XP drive, and do your osx install, once it's up and running reconnect your XP drive, then use BIOS to select which drive you want to boot from. This gives you 2 independant, bootable drives with no boot manager needed. Some motherboards, Like the newer Asus, have a boot menu selection key (such as F8) that will let you select the boot drive rather than having to enter BIOS setup to change it manually. It will also run much faster on an internal drive than a USB drive. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/63981-osx-on-external-drive/#findComment-452625 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tekel Posted September 21, 2007 Author Share Posted September 21, 2007 Sorry, forgot to mention I am planning on doing this on a laptop. Asus A8jp Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2 ghz Graphic Card: Mobility x1700 (works only 1024x768) Update: Works with 1152x864 when you insert this Resolution into Boot.plist!! Hard disk: Fuijtsu 120 GB SATA (works 100%) Sound: Intel 82801GBM ICH7-M (Works with modifikations) http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?s=&...st&p=284675 DVD-RW: HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-T10N (Recognized perfectly) Wired Network Card: Realtek 8168 PCI-E (working with installer realtek 8168/8111) Wireless Network Card: Intel 3945abg card (not working but you can exchange it with a working card) alternative Longshine 8131 with special driver http://www.tkr.de Touchpad: Synaptics PS2 touchpad (works 100%) Integrated Camera: (not working) This Driver(0.9.1) shows the camera but gives an USB-Connecting Error (but some time...)http://webcam-osx.sourceforge.net/ SD/MMC Reader: (not working) Integrated Bluetooth: Toshiba Bluetooth module (works 100%) And after scanning bios it seems that I can only boot from IDE devices. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/63981-osx-on-external-drive/#findComment-452646 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davejb Posted September 21, 2007 Share Posted September 21, 2007 Yeah, that's a bit of important info. You may need to have the USB drive connected for it to show up as a boot option. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/63981-osx-on-external-drive/#findComment-452656 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tekel Posted September 21, 2007 Author Share Posted September 21, 2007 On a side note I just read your specs in your Sig and noticed my desktop is near identical in specs. How is everything running on your system? Only difference is I am running a 6600gt. But I am wanting to get this running on my laptop so i am able to use it at work. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/63981-osx-on-external-drive/#findComment-452661 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davejb Posted September 21, 2007 Share Posted September 21, 2007 I've had zero problems with it so far. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/63981-osx-on-external-drive/#findComment-452665 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tekel Posted September 21, 2007 Author Share Posted September 21, 2007 Thanks for your input dave. Has anyone had experience installing on a External drive? Or should I just back up my Windows on the drive then just install on the internal? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/63981-osx-on-external-drive/#findComment-452683 Share on other sites More sharing options...
AntarcticP Posted September 21, 2007 Share Posted September 21, 2007 Hi Tekel, I've a lot of experience with installing it on an external drive. I've been using MacOsX from version 10.4.3 on my external USB drive. For the moment I'm on 10.4.10. It works pretty good (bit slower than internal drive though), but installing isn't simple. Maybe things are better with the latest version 10.4.9 or 10.4.10, but normally you can have problems booting. While your motherboard supports booting from USB the Darwin bootloader doesn't get installed automatically on an external drive. This means that you can install MacOsX on the external drive, but it won't boot. I've written a few guidelines for installing on an external drive. Just search for my posts. succes, AntarcticP Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/63981-osx-on-external-drive/#findComment-452712 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tekel Posted September 21, 2007 Author Share Posted September 21, 2007 Thanks, I will get diggin. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/63981-osx-on-external-drive/#findComment-452714 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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