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Booting from external USB drive, is it possible?


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Hello. I am trying to install iATKOS r2 into a Latitude D830 (Core 2 Duo), which I believe has already been done by someone on this forum.

 

The only difference is that I am willing to install it into an external USB drive which has 2 partitions made with DiskUtility from the installation on the Leopard DVD with MBR as the partition table format.

 

I have tried several times to install it, but all I get is a blinking cursor when I try to boot it up. I have also searched on Google and on this nice forum, but maybe I am not choosing the right words, so I decided to ask for help. I am also doubtful about if I should select some modeules or none from the custom.... install button.

 

Any help would really be appreciated. I hope not te be repeating this question.

 

Thanks in advance. :P

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Yes, it is possible, it works for me. You have to enable owners on the external disk before installing Leopard on it.

 

sudo vsdbutil -a /Volumes/VOLUME_NAME

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The answer above I have never heard of. Interesting. Make sure the following are done to ensure USB boot.

 

1. one word name for partition. Leopard or OSX will do.

 

2. Sometimes it is necessary to unmount second partition before you install. When drive is marked active sometimes the second partition can cause issues with that.

 

3. Try marking the partition active with fdisk. A lot of times that is all that is needed. Or you can use gparted however I have never had luck with it as it tends to destroy GUID partitions.

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Thanks for your answer, but is a little cryptic to me the answer. I have just started on Mac world since yesterday, and I don't know how to make such a command. Please, can you help me a little more on this?I have already installed it, could it possibly help to apply it after it is already installed? It is a little frustrating that each time I make a new try, it takes me more than 1 hour to install the OS. :)Thanks again.00Diabolic, thanks that I will try and report on success. Do I need to install the OS each time I make a new try?

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Ok so this is what I have tried. I changed the owners enabled and now it says ¨yes¨ on the diskutility on a mac. I have also used diskpart from Windows Vista and changed the partition to active... something I forgot to make on the first time. I only had changed the boot flag on the partition with gparted.

 

I still get the blinking cursor screen when trying to boot. I guess I will make two additional triesÑ first, I will try to install it again, and second will make the whole disk a single partition to see if this helps. If somebody has additional info or ideas that would like to share, I would be happy to hear about it.

 

thanks to everyone for your help.

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I have tried bless and vsdbutil, as well as making the drive active and with the boot flag.

 

Nothing seems to make it work.

 

I have noticed that although I can install os x on it, it does not appears in the startup menu as a drive that can be chosen to boot from. Does anyone has any idea about it?

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See my topic here: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=89287

 

Look at CCG's comment. That is a script you can run to recreate the bootloader that is either not there or never got installed. Also some USB to IDE/Sata adaptors are incompatible with some USB controllers. Try a different one or different HD. Sometimes that will make all the difference.

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