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10.4: Create a single Universal binary bootable disk - usb vs firewire
Authored by: zahadum on Mar 22, '06 11:08:52AM

this is a great workaround for a universal system until apple fixes this in leopard (and so many other tiger gotchas).

but one note of frustration regarding the boot drive -- unless one is willing to have a bulky 3.5" device to lug around, a 'mobile' a formfactor is the most practical approach.

but for some silly reason, none of the 'mobile' devices (2.5" winchester & slim dvd burners) are not avail with combo (usb/fw) interfaces. The oems force you to choose between only fw or only usb!

of cousrse we all know (but cant fathom) why apple dropped support for usb booting on ppc macs (avail in classic but not in osx); so that leaves fw as the only way to boot macs x-platform.

but the penalty for this arbitrary limitation on boot interfaces is that a precious fw port is consumed on the host machine - which are in short supply on new macs (part of apple's bizzare campaign to destory the viability of fw - eg on ipods); and fw is not widely avail on pc's, so one is sort of stranded (or saddles with extra gizzmos) if one picks a fw-only boot solution.

It would be so sweet to see 'mobile' dvd & 2.5" harddrives come with both ports (usb2 fw400 & fw800) ...

... while we are at it, a SATA & ethernet/NAS port would make great sense as well!

(not to mention IR & BT ports to be able to 'tunnel' in support for RemoteControl/FrontRow, but that's another story ;-)

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mailto:osxinfo _at_ yahoo.ca



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10.4: Create a single Universal binary bootable disk - usb vs firewire
Authored by: sfn on Mar 22, '06 11:47:54AM
Maybe this will help: USB2/FW 2.5 drive

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-sfn

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10.4: Create a single Universal binary bootable disk - usb vs firewire
Authored by: ershler on Mar 23, '06 07:19:17PM

Here's another option.

http://www.shop4tech.com/?go=view_item&id=1813&r=184



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10.4: Create a single Universal binary bootable disk - usb vs firewire
Authored by: robdandrea on Mar 24, '06 04:41:45AM

There are many manufacturers of 2.5 drive enclosures that sport both USB and FireWire, Lacie being one of them. Of course, you'll pay a bit more to have to daul interface but in my opinion, it's well worth the cost.



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10.4: Create a single Universal binary bootable disk - usb vs firewire
Authored by: johnsawyercjs on May 16, '07 01:49:56AM

OS 10.4.6 (and maybe one or two earlier point versions) and later WILL boot from a PPC Mac's USB port--Apple apparently relented. One limitation: You can't select it for booting in the Startup Disk Prefpane (it will just beep at you)--you have to select it from the Startup Manager, which you invoke at startup by holding down the Option key right after powerup or restart. I've confirmed this works on a slot-loading 350 MHz iMac that didn't even have Firewire ports. The iMac's firmware was version 4.1.9 (which it needs to be anyway, to allow OS X to work on the slot-loading iMac). I didn't test USB OS X booting on an even older, tray-loading iMac, nor did I test booting from a 2.5" USB drive enclosure, nor did I test USB OS X booting on the last of the PPC Macs, so I don't know what the story is there.



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