why isn't my external firewire drive bootable?

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David Besack - 02 Jul 2004 22:42 GMT

I have CompuCable FireXPress external drive. The Mac OS supports
installation of OSX on external drives, and supports booting from
firewire drives. But when I run the installer I can't install OSX on
the drive.

Is there some reason this would be true? I don't know anything about my
drive that would make it different from any other. Also, I don't have
any drivers installed, but I've never needed them (not even under OS9).

Thanks.

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Gregory Weston - 03 Jul 2004 02:33 GMT

> I have CompuCable FireXPress external drive. The Mac OS supports
> installation of OSX on external drives, and supports booting from
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> drive that would make it different from any other. Also, I don't have
> any drivers installed, but I've never needed them (not even under OS9).

I can think of a couple of reasons, but most or all of them depend on
what machine you've got.

Some machines, IIRC, do not support FW booting.

Some machines require OS X to be installed in the first 8GB of the
drive, and the installer is hesitant to install OS X on a partition
larger than 8GB on said machines.

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Jerry - 03 Jul 2004 05:06 GMT

> I have CompuCable FireXPress external drive. The Mac OS supports
> installation of OSX on external drives, and supports booting from
> firewire drives. But when I run the installer I can't install OSX on
> the drive.

David,

Try:
1. Install to a newly initialized or partitioned drive.
2. Use: http://www.lacie.com/silverkeeper/

These worked for me. I first tried to install the OS on a drive which
had a couple of GBs of data on it. Didn't work. I moved the data to
another location, repartitioned and reinstalled using Silverkeeper.
Worked like a charm the second time!!

Good luck!

Jerry

> Is there some reason this would be true? I don't know anything about my
> drive that would make it different from any other. Also, I don't have
> any drivers installed, but I've never needed them (not even under OS9).
>
> Thanks.

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jt august - 31 Jul 2004 21:31 GMT

> I have CompuCable FireXPress external drive. The Mac OS supports
> installation of OSX on external drives, and supports booting from
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
>
> Thanks.

If, like me, you have firewire not on the motherboard but on a PCI card,
then you cannot boot off it. (I have a beige g3)

jt

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BoogieWoogie - 01 Aug 2004 19:07 GMT

> > I have CompuCable FireXPress external drive. The Mac OS supports
> > installation of OSX on external drives, and supports booting from
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
>
> jt

Is your computer a b&w G3? They have never supported booting from
external firewire. It works just fine for me on a G5 though.

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Mac Forum / General / Hardware / August 2004

why isn't my external firewire drive bootable?