Intel Mac :: Is It Possible To Strip Down Boot Drive
Jun 29, 2012
I have purchased my first Mac Pro.I also am looking at buying a PCIe SSD to use as the home drive (boot). Since SSD drives are a zillion dollars, I can only afford a 120 gb drive. This will hold all my applications just fine, but the issue is with all the "extras" that go with these applications such as:
- Motion media & templates
- DVD Studio Pro templates
- Soundtrack Pro loops and samples
- music files (for iTunes)
- photos (for iPhoto)
- emails (for Mail)
Is it possible to download my OS and applications to the SSD, but route all the extra media, music, photos, emails, etc. to another hard drive? As far as I remember, the OS automatically puts items like the iPhoto library and iTunes music on the same hard drive as the appliciation, which could be a problem if those files continue to grow. Same with the Pro Apps.I don't recall that Motion or DVD SP give you the option of putting the extra media on a separate drive.
My internal 1TB hard drive on my iMac is dead and I don't have the money to replace it at the moment. I have everything backed up on an external 1TB drive using Time Machine. As a workaround for the time being,Is there any way I can install the system on the external drive and use that as the boot drive without erasing the Time Machine Backups? It seems to me I would have to have two partitions for the external drive, one for the system, and one for Time Machine. But is there any way to add a partition without erasing the existing one with Time Machine only on it?
OS X 10.4.3 IMAC Intel Core Duo. I backed up my HD on an external drive so I could upgrade to Snow Leopard. I wanted to test that I could boot from the external drive and selected it as my start up drive. When I did a restart I got the Apple and the turning gear and then suddenly a black screen with this on it: "May 28 22:23:11 Launched:com.apple.nibindd:respawning too quickly throttling, exited system abnormally bad system call too many failures in succession I have no name!"
I tried several dozen times with no luck. I think when I made the copy of my HD on the external HD I may have neglected to make it "bootable" (moving too quickly). My internal CDROM is busted so I use an external CDROM. I can't boot from it at all with the proper start up buttons pushed. It keeps trying to boot from the external drive. If I turn the external drive off and try to boot from the external CD I just get the grey file with the ? in the middle of it.
I tried using another external HD I have with OS 10.4 on it, but it won't recognize it either with fan, alt, shift, delete pressed at start up. My internal drive (a Seagate 2 tarabite drive) works great, but how do I reset it as the start up drive when I'm stuck with this black screen. One more thing, when I try to reset PRAM I don't get a second gong.
I have made sure my Mac hard drive is the main one which it is, i formatted it and also repaired it and nothing is working.
I have an HP and a Seagate external hard drive hooked up to my mac also and the Verbatim is the one that gives me the issue so I dont know whats happening..
Currently I'm upgrading from Leopard to Lion (via Snow Leopard) on both an iMac and MacBook Pro (both Intel), but before I proceed with the OSX upgrade I wanted to back everything up. Thus far I have partitioned an external firewire drive (G Drive - one that is bootable), and cloned each machine using Carbon Copy Cloner to it's own partition (both GUID). There is plenty of space left over on each partition, and is Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
The issue - I can boot the OS X from the external drive on the MacBook Pro but not on the iMac.
When I restart and hold down Option on the iMac the only drive that appears is the HDD, not the other two drives that are visible if I boot up on the MacBook Pro. On the iMac in System Prefs > Startup Disc I can see all 3 drives but when I select it and restart, the machine freezes on the grey loading screen and goes no further.
Not that it should make a difference, but there is a 3rd partition on the external drive that is currently empty (for extra storage).
I am unable to boot lion from an external drive on both a MacBook Pro mid-2009 and an iMac late 2008. Both have lion installed and I would like to boot from either a FW drive or USB key. I have reformatted both a FW drive and USB and set them to GUID and installed lion but I can only boot them to the Disk Utility App (drive shows up only as 'EFI Boot' when I hold option down).
The firmware is up to date and I also reset the PRAM. I am able to boot both computers from an external USB Snow Leopard drive.
Gray screen and 'prohibited' logo appeared today without apparent reason.Forced a power down by holding power button. Restarted....eventually reached user login screen but froze again on login attempt after password entered.
Restrated again by forced power down but only got gray screen and spinning gear.
Have now spent many hours going through most conceivable options including...
following instructions on http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570 re gray screen troubleshooting
have disconnected peripherals; reset smu, smc, and pram;
safe boot w shift key did nothing;
safe boot shift+v produced a screen of text that got as far as com.apple.launchd 1
but then several lines of text appeared repeating twice eaxctly same, each headed by disk0s2: I/O error. with [ErrNo 5], then
dyld: Library not loaded: and Reason: no suitable image found
final line ends with The System bootstrapper has crashed: Trace/BPT trap:5
I have tried installing from the original install disk several times but holding C key or Option/Alt key or D key gets no response and I cannot get the install disk to eject either holding down mouse button, eject button
I haven't done any recent upgrades or installed new software, no new peripherals attached.
Is this a dead hard drive or does someone have other suggestions that might work?
I have a 2TB Hitachi Backup drive, and a 1TB Verbatim Portable drive, both are USB 3, and when they are connected and the iMac is switched off, it will not boot until I remove the drive.
How can I leave the 2TB drive connected and power up the iMac ?
The 2TB drive was purchased to be a Time Machine backup drive.
Info: iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3), 3.4GHz Intel Core i7 - 8GB
Have late 2006 iMac 24'' and I can't boot from external FireWire drive. If I connect the same external drive via usb2 I can boot from it but it is slower than FireWire800 would be. The external drive is in i-tec 3.5 External Case.
Info: iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3), iMac 24'' late 2006 intel DualCore2
Here's a fun problem. After installing Sophos anti-virus and starting a (VERY slow) full scan, a day or two later I found my iMac frozen at the screensaver. It was completely unresponsive so I did a hard reboot, at which point it got as far as starting to boot Lion (apple logo on screen, spinning indicator showing) before stalling indefinitely in that state with the indicator spinning.
I restarted and booted from the recovery partition, launched disk utility, and discovered that the SMART status of the drive was "failing". The machine would still boot from the recovery partition and my boot camp partition, but I assumed that the disk failing was why the OSX partition wouldn't boot (the recovery partition worked, as did the windows 7 bootcamp partition). I replaced the factory-installed internal HDD with another of the same make, model, and capacity (Seagate 1TB), and performed a restore from the Time Machine backup on my Drobo.
The result was the same as the original problem - it wouldn't boot, hung with the indicator spinning. Thinking that the Sophos scan was somehow responsible (in-progress when the last TM backup was made) I tried restoring to a backup a few days older, (to the best of my recall from BEFORE I downloaded Sophos) only to have the same result.
Anyone have any ideas? I made a clean install of Lion (using the recovery partition on my old internal HDD, now connected externally via USB) to an external drive while I was waiting for the replacement hard disk to arrive, and it boots fine from that. I haven't tried a clean install to the internal HDD yet, as I'd obviously prefer to recover my installed apps as they were before, that being the point of a Time Machine backup, right?
My hard drive is so full, I cannot boot to desktop. It shows eyeglasses in top right corner. I don't have another mac to make it a hard drive. Is there another workaround?
I've been hearing good things about the Spinpoint Drives and the 750GB ones are coming down in price.Here is my current setup1 - 500MB Drive - Leopard2 - 320MB Drive - Vista 643 - 500MB Drive - FAT32 (Shared, Irrelevant)I plan on replacing drives 1 and 2 with 750GB Spinpoint drives.My question is, can I boot off of the Leopard dvd and put in Drive 1 and NewDrive1 and just clone it, and do the same for Drive2 and NewDrive2 and clone it? And then go into Leopard and resize the HFS partition, and go into Vista and resize the NTFS partition?
So my 2 year old apple macbook pro is losing its adonization on the strip just below the keyboard. I dont have a picture just yet, but it looks like this image, except it is below the left apple key and is much smaller in size: Before anyone asks:
1. I dont abuse my macbook. it cost me a fortune so i treat it like gold. it rarely leaves my desk, i wipe it down with a cloth once a week(light shammy cloth, the same as you use to clean guitars so as not to scratch them), I dont wear rings and i remove my watch before using the macbook so as not to scratch it.
2. I did not scratch it. I have saw die hard apple fans accusing folks with this issue of scratching the paint off with keys/pens etc, and of even photoshopping the image.
How does adonization come off? I thought it was a coating electronically plated onto the aluminium case? even heavy usage would not cause this, and i dont give it heavy usage at all. its really treated like a baby. Anyway, as the laptop is 2 years + old i doubt it will be under warranty. I will still be ringing up apple and complaining as its not the only thing that was wrong with this laptop. when i got it first, out of the box, the catch wouldnt work and it had to be sent back. the replacment i got had about 10 dead pixels and had to go back, and i finally got this one which has been fine for 2 years. This is a true sign that apple's quality control is non existent. This is appalling considering you pay a premium for the "quality" of their hardware. I dont know what my next computer will be. i like OSX, but as i cant get it legally on a non apple computer i will happly go to another OS if the hardware it runs on is of a better standard. I have a lenovo at work that is a fantastic machine so might look in that direction. Im not posting this to start a flame war, im just letting folks see my firsthand experience with apple and the falling quality of their products.
The plastic piece which is visible when the notebook is completely closed is the part that is loose. I can slide it side to side, and it makes noise occasionally. The screen doesn't seem to have any play in it, but im not sure if it is just an outer cover over the hinge or the actual hinger. My wife's macbook air has the same problem.
I have serious problem with my MBP.I used it a couple of days ago and everything was working well. Until the next day that i tried to start it and it fail to complete it's boosting process came up with a strips on the screen and shutdown after a while.
Please can anyone advice me on what to do?Is it a virus?if it is,what should i do next.
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Just picked up a 11.6" MBA this past Saturday. I am noticing an interesting display "issue"... I wanted to confirm that other's are not seeing this before I take it back to the store.
On the bottom of the display, there's a strip, maybe 2-3mm worth, where it is darker than the rest of the display. Are any of you seeing this behavior as well? It's particularly noticeable when when using solid background colors.
Got my macbook here. Bought it 1.5 years ago. Out of warranty. Running on 10.5.8. When I printscreen it, the white strip does not appear. Its present even when I'm using my mac. And additionally, It's only visible when the background isn't white or black. Also, its been happening on and off. It normally goes away if I've been carrying my macbook in my backpack and then open it up again (leads me to think maybe it is sensitive and may have been bonked on something while I was carrying it in my bag). However, this time, it hasn't gone away simply by rebooting it.
I just broke my mighty mouse today accidentally, I was just trying to fix the little ball inside of mouse. It was really HARD to open my mouse, I hate apple for making this product the wrong way. I notice once I finished cleaning the inside that I broke the ribbon off I don't know when it happened. Is there any way to fix this green ribbon strip its been cut in half? The green strip connects to the top part. The mouse does still work for 1 st left click but not right click or the sides. I wish I never done this in the first place. I have tried connecting the the ripped green strip by a piece of tape, but doesn't seem to work at all. Here is picture of the green strip my talking. This picture was found on the internet. [URL]
I need to strip the audio off of a few ProRes files with the end product being ProRes files; easy enough to do but don't want to degrade the quality of the original video (via any compression etc). If I just hit File/Share/Master File with the video-without-audio on the timeline, otherwise untouched, will it create an original-quality ProRes file essentially the original video without the audio?
If I have iTunes on an SSD drive (the boot drive in my Mac Mini), can it read the music library on a second rotational hard drive? I'd like not to have the large music library on a 120GB SSD drive.
I'm using a 20" white intel iMac and cannot manage to remove a linux boot disc from the optical drive.At first, the only way that i managed to boot to the linux disc in the first place was from the Startup Disk menu in OSX. I could not even get to the Startup Manager ('opt' at boot) or boot straight to the disc ('C').Now i'm in a position where no matter what i do, the system boots to the linux disc. I cannot even force the startup into OSX to try to eject the disc from there. I've tried holding all of these keys/combinations at startup
This is bad and old, and full of lessons about backing up. Anyway, internal boot drive crashed a week ago, and internal optical drive is busted. New external LaCie dvd burner works fine, but all attempts to start up from Tiger, Leopard and Diskwarrior installation disks just end up back in OS10.3 on my external LaCie FW drive. I've tried many things: unplugged everything; switched external LaCie to USB (wouldn't boot), unplugged power from internal optical drive so Mac wouldn't look there first (somebody suggested that). Attempts to start up installers from mounted DVDs result in installer screen with restart button, which, when clicked on, results in... you guessed it... boot back to dreaded 10.3 system. Night owls and westcoasters, I am up for hours yet, pulling hair.
Last week I finally upgraded from 10.6 to 10.7, but now my Mac Pro (2008) won't boot properly. It'll start to boot with the gray screen and the Apple logo, but then the entire screen goes gray and it just locks up there. However, if I reboot and hold down the Option key to bring up the list of bootable drives that works fine. I've checked my Startup Drive settings and the proper drive is selected. why it won't boot on it's own anymore? Holding down the Option key is getting old.
So my girlfriend boss wanted me to fix her computer. So I brought it home turned it on, and it didnt chime but it booted to the gray screen with apple logo/ slashed circle/and folder with a "?" So I made a USB Mac OS x bootable drive (FLASH) held down alt (try using a windows keyboard its fun) was able to select option and install a fresh copy. all seemed well was running really hot so I poped of the screen. HOLY MOLY! this thing is CAKED with dust, and I am not kidding it has literally piles of dust. So I ran updates, and did firmware updates. Turned it off for the night.
The next morning I went to radio shack and got Dust remove spray, opened it up made sure I was carful taking off the screen, and blew the sucker out. now its NICE and CLEAN. then i made sure I plugged everything in and turned it on. Drive spun like normal, Optical checked for a CD, and fans are also running normally. but no chime, no nothing stays as silent as normal but doesnt budge, it is like it hangs.
I decided that I couldn't wait for Gainestown and ordered a 2.8x8 MP today. I'm going to get another 8GB of RAM (I assume 10GB in matched pairs will still perform at full speed). My real dilemma is a Boot/Storage solution-I'm moving from a Dual 867 G4, so all my current drives, both internal and external are IDE, which basically means I'm starting over as far as internal drives goes. The G4 power supply gave out so I'm getting this external enclosure to put my old drives into for file recovery. As far as new drives go, I can't figure out what to do. I'll spare you my million iterations of drive configs I've sketched over the past two days.
I run SSD/HDD, my HDD in the optibay is broken, I stuck it in a external and it makes finder freeze, it got bumped around too much so I want to put a new one back in the 'correct place' for a spinner, and stick the SSD in the optibay.(I figure the extra 2% of shock protection offered by the orange rubber circle things is worth the trouble of moving everything).
I am also going to buy a WD 3 platter 1TB laptop drive, and I read that they fit fine in the regular spot in MBP's (I'm going to open and measure in a min.)Anyways, there's no BIOS, only EFI, so how to I pick what drive to boot from? with 10.6 is it as simple as holding option down on boot, and picking my 'OSX' HDD, and then it will auto boot from that until I specify otherwise? (I ask because before 10.6 people on here were always talking about how to switch boot drives.)
