OS X :: Booting From Firewire Disk On Two Machines
May 19, 2010
I am trying to keep my work files with me for of site access � our IT folks will not let me access my desktop remotely. I don't want to use a laptop carry to and fro either. Instead, I am thinking about booting from a firewire 800 disk (7200rpm), and functioning from exclusively. I can take the drive with me, whenever I need to have all data with me at a home machine � more importantly I am hoping I can boot from the same disk on my home iMac and do what I need to do. I just tested it out for to see if the performance is acceptable � I can barely tell the difference! (perhaps a bit longer to boot - but that's about it). My work computer is 27" iMac Core i7 2.8GHz with 8GB ram and my home unit is 24" iMac Core2Duo 2.8GHz with 2GB ram. Will booting OS X on two different machines and changing files get me into troubles down the line? I know that some applications won't like it as they look at the MAC id for license authentication. Any other issues that I should be aware of?
So here is my bright idea. I still may want to have Windows on my iMac for work projects *sigh* I think I came up with a solution, I rather not partition my iMac (when I buy it) 1TB drive for Windows. Don't want Windows on my main disk - I need the storage for Mac things, personal stuff etc. Is it possible to boot from a Firewire connected external HDD to run Windows?
I need to import my movies via firewire, but can only do it through my brother's macbook, as my new macbook does not have firewire. Therefore, I imported 100 GB worth of movies onto his computer, then transferred the iMovie Events and iMovie Projects folders onto a hard drive, then transferred them from the hard drive to MY macbook. Now they are sitting on the desk top. How do I get them into iMovie on my macbook, now that I have transferred the files from my brother's macbook onto my macbook's desktop?
I have a powerbook which I've been told can only boot it's OS through firewire only. My question is can any of you recommend an external firewire hard drive? I'm after a 1TB of storage as anything smaller isn't ideal. I don't want to spend bucket-loads, but I know that the option of firewire costs more, so I'm prepared for that. I've been told not to buy any Western Digital drives as they don't like to be used as a booting drive (for older macs I think anyway). I also wanted to know, could I used the hard drive to boot my OS from and also use to to save additional files, or is that a disaster waiting to happen?
if anyone has written anything to make it work with other Macs yet? Anyone figure out what restricts it from working with other machines? I would love to replace the beast of an external drive I have with this beautiful piece of work. I don't use the external a lot but enough I want one around. At the same time anyone figure out how to make the GUI interface of remote disk work with other machines? I know there is way to remote disk anything and have done it before but the GUI they added to this service is beatiful for the MBA. I would love to be able to use either of these things with out the MBA.
This has been the case for at least the last 3 machines I've had. Occasionally if you have firewire 800 plugged in the machine will not boot or sometimes the machine will hang and go into spinning wheel and only if you unplug firewire will it come out of it's hung state?When you boot you sometimes end up a white screen and only if you unplug FW800 will you get past that point.
I'm having a problem with my Powerbook G4. I kind of screwed up my drivers because I was an idiot and tried to get some Intel drivers to work on the computer through some cheat thing and now my computer won't boot up. I have an install disk but when I try to reinstall it keeps saying that I need Mac OSX Install Disk 2. I never had to use disk 2 before and I never had one to begin with.
I am attempting to fix my gf's Macbook Pro w/ 10.4. She had tried to reinstall the OS a few weeks ago, and I think the installation was bad.
So, her computer ended up not booting, and just sitting on the start-up screen.
I decided I would try a full reinstall, with formatting and everything. I backed up her files, and could not get them to delete from her harddrive using my computer (when linked via firewire). So, I booted from the disc, erased her drive, and formated in Extended Journaled.
I tried to install the operating system, on what I assume is a clean harddrive, but about halfway through, it keeps failing. I went into disk utility, and the harddrive says "verified" in the S.M.A.R.T section, but whenever I run verify, or repair, I get an error message saying "Could not unmount disk".
I searched the forum, and there are topics concerning this message when accessing disk utility normally, but nothing about this message appearing while running from the OS disc, on a fresh harddrive.
I have tried everything I know of (which is not much), with no success.
Could this error e the cause of OS installation failure? If not, the only other thing I can think of is that the actual dvd is bad, but it looks fine to me.
I'm planning on buying an external firewire 2.5 disk, and i am wondering if there is any real difference between firewire 400 and 800 if the disk is 5400 rpm speed. The reason i am asking is i cant find the passport studio with firewire 800 anywhere here where i live, only the firewire 400 version.
I have a cramped windows partition on my hard drive which is now full, I'd love to reclaim the space by moving it to my Firewire hard drive which has much more available to dedicate to Windows. I used the "Restore" feature of Disk Utility creating an identical copy but when I restarted my computer to boot from it there was no choice of a firewire drive. I checked in the Startup Disk pref pane it wasn't to be seen, and that didn't even show the current Windows partition that was an option when I restarted. When I get info on the volumes in disk utility it says EXACTLY the same thing about each. So needless to say, I'm slightly annoyed but somehow I think I'm trying to get it to work in a way that it can't.
Ever since updating to 10.7.3 a while ago my SATA Firewire 800 disk refuses to mount. I can make it mount by rebooting with the disk plugged in, but the solution is unacceptable. Is this a known problem? Anyone else experienced it? Any workarounds?
Ive made an OS bootable super duper backup of my white intel imac (late 2006) 10.6.8 onto a WD My Book Studio 2TB (GUID partioned) and although the drive appears to be running fine from the OS its not being seen as a startup drive when connected via usb or firewire (with an 800 to 400 adapter) after holding down the option key at startup. I tested the startup drive capability on a newer imac running 10.7.4 and it shows up as a viable startup drive when holding option at boot up and plugged in via firewire.
why the older imac might not be picking up the drive at bootup with option key pressed?
Info:iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), WD My Book Studio 2TB
I'm just curious if it's possible to put my Mac Pro into TDM, connect it to my MacBook Pro, start it up holding option to choose a start-up disk, and use the Mac Pro's HD to boot up. I'd experiment myself, but the Mac Pro is packed at the moment, and I'd like to know if anyone knows for sure that it will or will not work before digging it out.
I'm having issues setting up a Tri-boot system on my Macbook. I can't figure it out at all. I've created the partitions, and began installing XP. After the set up, the machine reboots to finish the install, but I get a 'disk error: press any key to reboot' error after the install. I am not installing though Bootcamp, and I have insured the drive is an NTFS drive, as that is reason the disk error usually appears.
I have an iMac G5 that I have previously had both the HDD and logic board replaced by Apple. It has been giving me a lot of spinning beach balls lately and yesterday would spin when I did anything as simple as opening Safari. I had tried to repair the disk in Disk Utility, but it failed after a few minutes. Last night I restarted it and it got stuck on my desktop, but wasn't fully loaded. I restarted it with the Leopard disk and I tried both to "Verify" and "Repair" the disk and neither worked. This morning when I tried it again, the only option available was "Verify Disk."
When I do this I get the attached message. It is an iPhone pic, so I apologize for the quality. I'd like to get this figured out ASAP, as we are moving out of state tomorrow! My other thought was I could try to boot with the Leopard disk and do a Time Machine restore. I'm not sure if that would help though. I don't have anything TOO important on the internal HDD, but I would like the chance to pull it out and hook it up to another computer to sift through it. I'm afraid if I do the Time Machine restore something might happen and I won't have the chance to go through the HDD.
I have had problems after latest update - parallels, airport loss etc. so I thought about restoring my mac with time machine, but after inserting leopard dvd, I only get the initial leopard "galaxy" screen, nothing else. Tried holding c key, via disk utility, etc. Cant boot up in safe mode nor single mode. Wondering wether it is because I am only using an external screen - the screen of my macbookpro went a long time ago.
I've been trying to install XP using boot camp, but when i try to partition the disk i get an error message saying disk needs to be repaired using the installation disk of mac os x, i've tried using the application under os x to repair the disk but i still get the error message, so i when i try to boot with the disk by pressing the "c" key nothing happens and the computer boots normally.
Here is the situation. I have a 12 in Powerbook G4 with OS X. About a week ago I downloaded a security update and once it was downloaded it asked to either restart or shut down the computer. I clicked restart. It shut down and then turned back on but only got to the Apple symbol with the small grey spinning wheel beneath and wouldn't finish booting up past that. I tried turning it on while holding down the option button and it went to the hard disk screen and clicked the right arrow but it still didn't get past that screen.
My Power Mac froze, and won't boot. I'm running 10.4. No recent changes, downloads, or updates. Safe mode won't work. freezes on grey start up screen. System CD in drive, won't boot from holding down "c" held down option and selected CD and finally got to disk utility.
Now, when I try to run utility to repair permissions, I get an error stating "disk utility has lost its connection with the disk management tool and cannot continue. Please quit and relaunch disk utility" happens over and over.
When I try to repair disk, I get a red line saying "reserved fields in the catalog record have incorrect date, keys out of order. The volume could not be repaired". Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972). 1 volume could not be repaired.
Info: powermac G5 2.5g ram 23 flat screen, Mac OS X (10.4.11)
...why does Target Disk Mode (let's call it TDM for short) depend on Firewire? TDM first went away with the MacBook Air, and now we've lost TDM for the latest non-pro Macbooks.
Since I don't think Apple would invite all of the subsequent grief caused by the lack of TDM if USB were an easy out for more or less the same job, what is it that I'm missing?
I just bought MacBook Air yesterday (the 80GB version), and love it! It makes a nice companion to my MacBook Pro. I have now one problem. How do I get my Time Machine backup from my Firewire disk to the MacBook since MBA does not have a Firewire port?
I have a Macbook Pro with an inoperative slot-loading Superdrive. I purchased Snow Leopard today, planning to use my Mac Pro w/working Superdrive in Firewire Target Disk Mode to install the OS on my Macbook Pro. I can mount the Snow Leopard install via TDM, but the installer informs me that I cannot install Snow Leopard from "this volume" (presumably because the Target Disk Mode connection isn't recognized as an optical drive?). I've also tried to use "Remote Install OS X," but because my MBP is not an Air, it doesn't have the necessary firmware to select a network boot on startup by holding Option. Am I out of luck until I get access to a firewire external DVD drive?
I have a 1TB MyBook from Western Digital. When I connect it via Firewire 800 to my MBP in Windows 7 (Bootcamp) it is recognised but when I start copying (read or write) it just hangs after a while or becomes very slow. If I connect it via USB it works. Do I need some drivers ? If yes, where can I found them? I found this on WD but I have the previous generation i.e. without the digital screen. If I go to the software download, it says that the drivers won't work with the previous gen.
I'm using a Late 2010 27" i5 iMac and a Late 2009 15" MacBook Pro. I'm going to reformat and reinstall the iMac this weekend but need to grab all my Music/Documents (you know the drill) from it. Last time I did this, I did it over a 100mbps network, needless to say it was absolutely horribly slow. So, today I'm going to pick up a cheap-ish firewire cable and target my laptop as a disk using target disk mode.Â
Which type of Firewire cable do I need to buy? It's either a 4-pin or 6-pin choice, no 9-pins available at the shop I intend to visit. I have no idea what the difference is between them - hardware is definitely not my game. Both ports look like this (taken from Apple's docs, Firewire 800):
I have a bit of a problem: I cant access my Mac because I lost the password. I recently changed my passwords on several macs, including an old PPC PowerMac G5 from ca 2005. I run 10.5.8 on this and it works flawlessly. I need to use this machine for important work. Â
So this is what I have tried so far:Â
1) Tested with all known passwords I have used in the past.
2) Tried to boot from a 10.6 install DVD
3) Tried to boot from just C and later Command C
4) Tried a different install DVD 10.4Â (I dont have the original 10.5 DVD)
5) Tried to use T and Target Disk Mode from an iMac with Lion. (disconnected all other FW disks etc.)
6) Tried different Firewire cables
7) Tried different Firewire connections.Â
It starts obediently and show every sign of Mac-Happiness. But I simply can't get the darn thing to boot. I think it normally should have booted using 10.6? Â
I just purchased a LaCie triple interface (500GB disk to use as a bootable external drive to support our family's family of mac's, all running 10.6.8 including a 2006 Core Duo iMac, a 2007 Core2Duo iMac, a Core2Duo Mini, and a 2010 MacBook Pro.Â
The firewire drive does not appear as a bootable option on any of the computers, attached to either of the iMacs via the Firewire 400 port (through a 400 to 800 adaptor), or attached via the Firewire 800 port on the MBP. This is the profile of the LaCie via System Profiler on the iMac?
FireWire Bus:  Maximum Speed:         Up to 400 Mb/sec  Rugged FW USB3:  Manufacturer:         LaCie
I have an original MacBook1,1 running Snow Leopard 10.6.8. It will not start up, I have tried everything on this Apple web page , Mac OS X: Gray screen appears during startup, besides an erase and reinstall and I don't know what to do. It won't read the Snow Leopard update disk (My other two Macs do). When I restart In Verbose Mode, it always stops right after 'Airport: RSN handshake complete on en1'. When i started my other Mac in Verbose Mode, after 'Airport: RSN handshake complete on en1', it went straight to the login window. I called Apple support and they said that I need to perform an erase and reinstall but first I need to get an install disk for Mac OS X Tiger 10.4. and get some things off using Target Disk Mode. I do not have a FireWire cable and do not want to have to go and buy one. I have an Ethernet cable and a male - male USB cord. The two other Macs that I have are an iMac7,1 running Snow Leopard 10.6.8, and a MacBook6,1 running Mavericks 10.9.4.
My G4 powerbook has been saying recently that the start up disk is full, so i tried to empty some stuff off it. But not long after this when i tried booting it up the normal happens at first ie the t'ing' start up sound and the apple sign with the little timer going round but it does nothing else, it just carries on going round. I have tried re setting it and looked on help sites like this to try and override it etc but nothing seems to work!
