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Create a hard-drive based OS X installer
Authored by: johnsawyercjs on Mar 28, '07 10:18:54PM

The Intel OS X installer won't install onto a drive formatted as APM (Apple Partition Map)--that will definitely produce the general error message you're getting. But if you're trying to install an Intel OS X version, using a MacBook, onto a drive formatted as GUID/GPT (doublecheck that it is), and it's giving you the general message that it can't install onto the drive, then there's some other problem the Installer isn't happy about. Reset the MacBook's SMU and try again. I've also seen this happen on drives with bad blocks, so check the hard drive for this, using something like Data Rescue II, Drive Genius, TechTool Pro, etc.

Since you mention APM, here's some general info on making a dual-boot (OS X Intel and OS X PPC) drive:

To BOOT on an Intel Mac, a drive CAN be formatted as APM (Apple Partition Map)--it does NOT need to be formatted as GUID/GPT (GUID Partition Table) to boot on an Intel Mac. A little while after the Intel Macs had been released, someone noticed that Apple's installer CDs and DVDs for the Intel Macs are in APS/APM format. The only condition under which a drive needs to be formatted as GUID, is when you run the Intel version of the OS X installer onto it. Once Intel X is installed, you can copy it to anything you like, including drives formatted as APM, and that copy will boot an Intel Mac. Naturally, it won't boot a non-Intel Mac. So, to have a single drive that can boot both an Intel Mac and a non-Intel Mac, format the drive as APM, then partition it into two volumes, one for the PPC version of OS X, and the other for the Intel version of OS X. If all you have is an Intel Mac, you'll need to use an OS X copy program, or Disk Utility, to copy an already-installed bootable copy of OS X PPC from a PPC Mac, to the PPC boot volume, since the Intel Mac won't boot from an OS X PPC installer disc; if all you have is a PPC Mac, the reverse is the case.

You'll notice I didn't say anything about formatting a VOLUME as APM or GUID--just formatting a DRIVE as either format--since you can't have one drive with a volume formatted as APM, and another volume on that drive formatted as GUID, since APM and GUID don't actually describe a volume's format, but rather a drive's partition table, of which there's only one per drive. As a Macfixit article from last year states: "…there is only one partition table on a hard drive. There is no way to hybridize the table so that it is legal in both GUID and APM, so you have to pick one or the other."



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Create a hard-drive based OS X installer
Authored by: johnsawyercjs on Dec 20, '07 10:29:04AM

I should have pointed out above, that the hard drive inside all Intel Macs should probably always be formatted as GUID (or nearly always, depending on your needs), even though an Intel Mac can boot from an APM-formatted drive, since there are some Apple installers and updaters that won't work properly if you run them on an Intel Mac, with an APM-formatted drive as the target. You also don't want to confuse anyone who may work with the Mac in the future, who might not know if the Mac's drive is formatted as APM. Also, I've recently read at least one report that a GUID-formatted drive performs read/writes faster than an APM-formatted drive, when run on an Intel Mac, though I'd like to see some confirmation of this.



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