madpike05 Posted January 24, 2008 Share Posted January 24, 2008 Hi, so i installed leopard on 1 of my older hard drives and put it in a hard drive case that i can hook up to my computer. so I have Vista on my laptop's internal hard drive and leopard on the external and im trying to switch between the operating systems by changing the bios to boot from the USB hard drive, but it isnt working. So is it possible or what am i doing wrong and how can i get it to work? Computer specs.: Hp Pavilion DV6000 1.8ghz core 2 duo 2gb ram nvidia 7400 Intel Pro Wireless card Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/83304-can-i-boot-leopard-on-an-external-hard-drive/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
madpike05 Posted January 24, 2008 Author Share Posted January 24, 2008 Bumpyyyy bump. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/83304-can-i-boot-leopard-on-an-external-hard-drive/#findComment-592342 Share on other sites More sharing options...
hecker Posted January 24, 2008 Share Posted January 24, 2008 I assume that the boot loader tries to access a drive descriptor that has now changed, since you removed the drive from your PC and connected it to the USB interface. The two options I can think of are: - to edit the darwin boot loader to access the new drive's descriptor: This can be done by entering rd=discXYZ (where X is the disc number, Y is the interface and Z is the partition number) in the darwin configuration file. You could also try pressing F8 right before OSX boots to display the darwin boot loader prompt and enter it there directly. If you're lucky you'll be presented with a list of bootable devices you can choose from. or to reinstall Leo from scratch but using the USB interface instead of the internal connection. You can learn about Darwin Bootloader, here: http://www.neonkoala.co.uk/faqs/16-booting...rwin-bootloader Good luck, hecker Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/83304-can-i-boot-leopard-on-an-external-hard-drive/#findComment-592365 Share on other sites More sharing options...
cgsheen Posted January 24, 2008 Share Posted January 24, 2008 Notice below that I'm booting 2 computers from external USB drives. The difference is I used the external drive (attached to a different computer) to install OSX. After the initial install, I made sure the external partition was bootable, and plugged it into the "target" computer. I actually took this as far as using the same drive (with the same 10.5.1 install) to boot 4 different computers (with different hardware) - one being my Compaq V2312us laptop which is VERY Leopard unfriendly. Boot first in safe mode ( -x ). I suppose that proves you don't have to do the installation using the computer that will ultimately be running the OS. My 3rd install is on a computer who's SATA device is not recognized by the 10.5.1 installer I used. With an SATA DVD and SATA internal HD, I didn't think I could run OSX. I'd had some success with running Leopard from an external drive so that led me to this next step. Booting from the external drive allowed me to get to the OSX Desktop where I could easily apply the SB600_SATA_ATA.kexts that enabled SATA support! The other benefit: I didn't risk my existing OS installation while trying to get OSX running... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/83304-can-i-boot-leopard-on-an-external-hard-drive/#findComment-592850 Share on other sites More sharing options...
madpike05 Posted January 24, 2008 Author Share Posted January 24, 2008 thanks for the info, i guess i will have to reinstall. but where do you get the SB600_SATA_ATA.kexts because i have leopard on an SATA drive and think i need this. thanks Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/83304-can-i-boot-leopard-on-an-external-hard-drive/#findComment-592865 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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