This isn't so much a hint as much as a discovery, but it could be useful to someone. Talks about getting a PowerPC Mac to start from a USB 2.0 drive, but it involves messing around with the system's NVRAM, which can be a complicated thing to do.But today, I tried something new. I backed up my internal drive to an external USB 2.0 drive using (a great application, by the way). Today, just for fun, I rebooted my PowerBook G4 with the USB drive connected while holding the option key to load the boot drive selection menu.
It showed my internal drive as well as my external backup drive as valid boot drives, so I chose the external drive. OS X booted successfully off of the external drive, albeit slowly. But for recovery purposes, this could be invaluable.My system is running 10.4.8, so I'm not sure if this is a 10.4.8 feature, a SuperDuper! Related thing, or if it has to do with some other factor, but it works, and that's all I care about.
robg adds: I can't easily confirm this one, so if others with USB2 drives and bootable backups could test, I'd be appreciative. Sometimes if volumes don't appear in Startup Manager (what you get when you hold down the Option key at startup), you need to reset the Mac's PRAM, NVRAM, and Open Firmware. Shut down the Mac, then power it up, and before the screen lights up, quickly hold down the Command, Option, P, and R keys, until the Mac has chimed twice more after the powerup chime.
Then, before the screen lights up, hold down Command-Option-O-F until the Open Firmware screen appears. Then enter these lines, pressing Return after each one:reset-nvramset-defaultsreset-all. But in specific, late answer to the question, yes, most flash drives (bootable ones-some early ones aren't bootable, and some early (and maybe some later?) USB drives aren't bootable) will boot OS 10.4.3 and later, from USB (1.1 and 2.0), on most Macs, starting with the slot-loading iMacs, the AGP/Sawtooth G4, and the Powerbook G3 Firewire. Some late-model Powerbook G4s don't seem to be able to boot from USB, but I haven't tested that much, to see if something else was going on that might be resolvable. Starting with the release of the AGP G4 towers, Macs gained the ability to boot from USB-connected media in general. For some reason, historically, Mac OS X specifically wasn't able to boot from a USB-connected device on a PPC Mac. When the x86 Macs were released they could boot OS X from USB media, but PPC machines still couldn't.
So this ability to do so now is new and perhaps not as simple as 'now it works.' It may not be supported and may instead just be a coincidence of installation that a handful of people have run across. This is weird, because I was recently trying to do exactly this, to implement another tip here regarding making a single drive that could boot both Intel and PPC Macs. When it came time to install Tiger on the PPC partition, it woudn't let me, stating something like 'can't install on this drive because this computer cannot be started up using this drive'. I did some searching, and seemed to find near universal consensus that PPC Macs couldn't boot from USB (2 or otherwise).So what gives here?. I found the following interesting anomaly when attempting to boot from my USB 2.0 Western Digital 'My Book' drive.
First I tried to make a clone of my Mac's drive using RsyncX. While it appears that the synchronization process was successful, I found I was not able to boot from the remote drive as I expected (it's well known that booting from an external USB drive isn't supported on Macs). I then tried, as the comment suggested, making my backup clone with SuperDuper! Somehow, my Mac was actually able to boot off the USB 2.0 drive using the backup clone made by SuperDuper!I don't know exactly what SuperDuper! Does outside of simply copying files so I can't speculate on why this program allowed my Mac to boot off a USB 2.0 drive.
I'll provide my system information in case it helps someone figure out why this worked.Powerbook G4 12'PowerPC 1.33 GHz. Hmm, same machine here, well, almost: 12' Powerbook, 1.5 GHz, 1.25 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD, running 10.4.10. Made a clone with SuperDuper 2.1.4 to an 2.5' HDD in an external USB housing, took about 90 minutes, as fast (or slow) as Carbon Copy Cloner or Disk Utility restore. Looked good, almost everything got across oK (except, thankfully, for the virtual memory partitions;-), but no-go. Not with option at startup, nor selectable in the Startup Disk Panel. I did the backup with the formatting option and the permissions repair enabled, but that shouldn't do any damage.
So, what am I missing here?. Not so easy as it makes it sound.especially for someone in my position, whose internal hard drive is more than twice the size of their external.
For me, i have 350gigs worth on my internal drive, but my external is only 150gigs.So I created my own custom copy script in superduper, to exclude my the folders that contain large amounts of data i don't need backed up.This cut down the size to something that fits. All of the ignored folders are in my home folder, so i don't think it should inhibit the system from booting.
Superduper says it did it all, but alas, i cannot get it to appear in startup disk panel, or by holding option at startup, or even with the older Open Firmware bit.I have a G5 quad powermac, 10.4.8. WHAT AM I MISSING!!. I have a powerbook G4 1.5Ghz with 10.4.8. I used SuperDuper today to copy my computer hard drive to a Western Digital My Book USB2 drive.
SuperDuper said at the end of the process that the drive was made bootable, but the SuperDuper website is clear that this should not work on a USB drive. After the copy was made, i noticed that the number of files copied was a little less than the total number of files, whatever that means. I checked in StartUp Disk/System Preferences and the USB2 drive partition with the system did not show up as a choice of start up drives. Only the computer hard drive showed up with the system. After I read this hint, i tried holding down the Option key and restarting but it didn't bring up the external disk partition-the only choice that came up was the computer hard drive system folder. I tried it twice. I may be doing something incorrectly.
Actually I am loading my iBook 500 g3 with tiger from a USB 1.1 as I type this. I tried a lot of goofing around but working with an old USB external DVD is working fine. I replaced the iBook hard drive and didn't have a CD version of Tiger. The external drive is an old USB klunker.
I did find that the DVD drive you use makes a great difference. It seems half the DVD rom (IDE) drives out there do NOT provide the boot code the MAC wants to see. I have three drives that would not boot my iBook. The one I am using now is a Samsung (ugg) DVD/CDRW from Micro-XXXX. (The $29 variety) Boot with the option key, Bios shows both the internal and external DVD and has allowed a flawless (pretty slow) installation.-Michael. Hi all!Here is my 'success' story.I had a PB G4 with a dead internal hd, and I have bought an external usb 2.0 drive. I was told by apple tech support, that booting off the external drive is impossible on g4 computers.Then, I have stumbled upon this site, and with SuperDuper, I have made a complete backup of the neighbour's mac mini.
I borrowed the mini, did the backup, and in SuperDuper, all of the booting related options were greyed out.I have tried booting the mini from the external drive, and it did not work.Even if i held down the option key, the drive did not show up in the bios.I wasn't able to select it as a startup disk, either.Then, I was curious, how would my PB react to this new situation with a -supposedly- bootable version of 10.4 on the usb drive.And, tadaa, as I went into the bios, the drive showed up!I was able to boot the system, and I can use it now, it's not really slow at all for general usage. Only the booting is slightly longer than usual.I didn't really notice anything bad, all the new hardware parts, airport, etc were detected instantly.It is working fine, however, there are strange things.Sometimes, the drive doesn't appear in the bios, but boots.Sorry for the long post, and the bad english. Best I can tell, from my experience and that of people posting above:. USB 1.1 and 2.0 ports/drives have always booted OS 9, on any Mac that can boot into OS 9. Macs up through the Powerbook G4 1.33 GHz, and at least some desktops of the same vintage, and maybe a few other pre-Intel PPC Macs (not sure why not all the pre-Intel PPC Macs), will boot from USB 1.1 and 2.0 ports/drives into OS 10.4.x (at least 10.4.6 and above-I didn't try earlier versions)-NOT OS 10.3.9 or earlier. Older Macs may need their firmware updated to the last version available for that Mac model, and not all USB drives might boot. Hi Mike,Thanks for the hint.
I have two problems which I need your help on. I'm 3 days old using Mac. I have an iBook G3 600Mhz/384MB dual USB running on OSX 10.1.5. I'm looking into upgrading to Tiger or Panther as 10.1.5 is very annoying (as you know, I'm sure).
How do you managed to install Tiger without the CD? Did you copied from your old hard drive? Or you ripped the image off a CD?Another problem is the USB drive, it doesn't seem to detect anything I put into it.
I have a USB external hard disk, a Sandisk Ultra II USB plus SD card and Belkin 54G wireless dongle. When I plugged in the external drive or the SD card via USB, I get an error saying something like 'there are no readable volumes' and prompted me to repair or initialize it.
But when I did, nothing happens.What should I do? Please help as I can't afford to buy another Windblows laptop.Many thanks in advance!!!.
Your post worked GREAT, but I have a few things to add.- To upgrade OSX 10.4 on a iBook G4 and PowerMac G4 (both running Tiger) to Leopard 10.5 with only a DMG and USB drive - Download/Install: Carbon Copy Cloner at link:Copy the DMG to the laptop- Connect a USB drive WITH external power source to the laptop- Using Disk Utility: Erase the drive- Open 'Carbon Copy Cloner' and select the DMG of the install disk- Select 'Use block-level copy' 'Erase drive'- Click 'Clone'Once the clone is complete, reboot the Mac and perform the open-firmware changes mentioned in this post. You should then be able to install from the external USB drive like it was the actual DVD.NOTE. I do NOT endorse stealing software. I obtained my DMG from our Apple Enterprise License at work and downloaded it directly from them.Once you see your new OS you will need to reset your firmware so it doesn't try and boot from the USB drive anymore.- Reboot the computer and press:Command-Option-P-RThis resets the firmware to the factory settings.Keep holding this until you hear three 'Bongs'. Once you release, the Mac should boot normally into your new OS!ENJOY!!.
I have a PowerBook G4 1.6 w/ 15' screen running OSX 10.4.11, and was in the process of switching HD from 80GB to 250GB. Never enough disk space. None-the-less I came accross this thread and it was a life saver. First of all, I finally got a clear indication that holding down the Option key was all I needed to do to select my boot drive on powerup. Even better, I was able to easily move from my old internal to the new internal by using SuperDuper (link: ). Wow it WORKED! I was able to test the new drive before even cracking the case.
So after I finished the drive replacement I purchased a registered copy, its that good. Thanks to everyone. There are several posts in this thread that refer to 'copying' an installation to another disk, in order to boot from it. You should know that OS X DOES NOT SUPPORT a simple copy of a System installation to another drive. It will not boot. The only way to do it is with a program that knows how to make a copy 'bootable'.
Ibook G4 Apple Laptop
I believe that the only utilities that make it possible are SuperDuper, CarbonCopyCloner and Apple's own Disk Utility.So unless you're using one of those utilities to clone your working OS X installation to another drive, it's virtually certain that you'll fail. Also, from reading this and another hint on the topic, it sounds like there are two other things that might make some difference:1) When formatting the drive you want to clone TO, don't check the box labeled 'Install OS 9 drivers', and.2) Make sure you're cloning an installation that is specifically 10.4.6 or newer (and by extension, you might want to make sure the system that you're booted from to do the clone, meets that requirement as well?)Good luck, and post back when you discover tips or tricks that seem to work for you!. Even though I highly recommend both SuperDuper and CarbonCopyCloner (and in fact use SD to make bootable external backup drives for client's machines all the time) I thought it prudent to point out that you really shouldn't use either to clone a hard drive from an old machine to use in a new machine if the new machine is not of the same processor family as the old one!In other words, it can be dangerous to think that an installation created for a PPC machine will work fine in an Intel one.
Ibook G4 Charger
Best to do a clean install, then copy your data over manually.Hope that makes sense!. Perhaps somebody with more experience can tell me why I cannot boot into OS 9.2.2.This is what I did:With my 733 MHz G4 I used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone a volume with a little used OS 10.4.11 and OS 9.2.2 onto an 8 GB USB flash memory stick. I can boot into the flash 10.4.11 but not the 9.2.2 except from the original 9.2.2.Flash details:Apple partition mapMac OS Extended (Journaled)OS 9 drivers installedI would be grateful if somebody could tell me what to do so that I can boot into the flash 9.2.2 from both Startup Disk and Startup Manager. Here's what I did to be able to boot from an external USB drive on my PowerPC G5:Be sure to partition the disk with an Apple Partition Map (i.e. Not GUID or MBR)2. Determine the partition where your bootable image it situated (e.g. An MacOSX DVD or DMG restored to a partion with Disk utility's restore).
Ibook G4 1.2 Ghz
This might be disk1s3 in which case the partition number is 33. Restart your iMac while holding down Command-Option-O-F (Alt-Cmd-O-F). This will land you in Open Firmware.4.
Type:dev / lsto get the device tree/list.Look for something in the output like:/usb@b/disk@1As we're talking about a tree here, write down the complete path to this node. In my case it would be:/ht/pci@2/usb@b/disk@15. Type:devalias ud /ht/pci@2/usb@b/disk@1In other words: make 'ud' equal to the path you found in step 4.6. Now verify you got the right disk:dir ud:3,(3 is the partition number you wrote down in step 2)And look for a file with tbxi attribute, probably in:SystemLibraryCoreServicesBootX, e.g.:dir ud:3,SystemLibraryCoreServices7. Then boot from it:boot ud:3,SystemLibraryCoreServicesBootX8. Presto!USB's your uncle. So, it doesn't seem to be officially supported by Apple, but in many cases (or most cases?) it works.Luckily also in my case:- Just today I made a system copy (OS X 10.4.11) with Carbon Copy Cloner 3.3.3 to an external USB drive (without external power support!) and I could boot from it holding the 'ALT' key during the start of the Mac.
No problem at all.- The Mac: iMac 17' TFT 1,25 GHz (PowerPC 7445 = G4 processor; bought 2003/09)And I have a good reason to boot from USB: my firewire ports are both defect. So I am really glad that the USB method did work!!!. Alternative boot switch:If holding down Option during start-up doesn't work for you (i.e.
The Startup Manager does not show your USB device as a selectable option), you can try to hold down simultaneously Command-Option-Shift-Delete during start-up instead. This makes the Mac skip the default boot device setting and scan for an alternate boot device. Be prepared for an agonizingly slow boot through early version USB ports. Your vintage OS-X-Mac may seem hung for a while but is actually just watching paint dry and will eventually move on.;-) If you get error messages, your USB media may be formatted or partitioned incorrectly (there are several settings to consider, one of these - the Applepartitionscheme - is a somewhat hidden option in Disk Utility; easily overlooked).
Don't rely on this, though. Whenever my dumpster salvaged iBook G4 decides it doesn't want to boot from the hard drive any more it then also fails to do this scan for an alternative boot device (I think some kernel panic hits it first). In this situation the earlier described boot through firmware still works (in my case 'boot usb0/disk:3,:tbxi'). (Note: so far I have been able to boot from one 4GB Micro Center give-away flash stick (long straight) but not a more recent such Micro Center give-away (short curvy) - so, some flash sticks simply might not work (perhaps if they register too slowly)).