Creating a bootable Firewire disk - how many bootable partitions?
Mike Lindsay
drive for Time Machine. It's working well but I see the usefulness of
making the drive bootable. Since I'm only a few days in, I may as well
do it now.
MacFixit advocates creating 3 partitions, a 10G partition to clone the
Installation DVD to, a 30G partition to install 10.5 on, and the
remainder for Time Machine. Since restores can be done from the
installer DVD, why not save the 30G space for backups? Is there a
pitfall I'm missing?
Additionally. I already have a bootable second internal drive.
nospam
<he...@possibly.net> wrote:
> I've installed 10.5 on my Mac Pro and am using an external Firewire
> drive for Time Machine. It's working well but I see the usefulness of
> making the drive bootable. Since I'm only a few days in, I may as well
> do it now.
superduper can clone your internal drive to the external drive and it
will be bootable. time machine doesn't work that way.
> MacFixit advocates creating 3 partitions, a 10G partition to clone the
> Installation DVD to,
they do???
there is no need for a 10g partition if you have the dvd, unless you
want to hack the installer scripts to install on unsupported machines.
the mac pro is definitely not among those.
> a 30G partition to install 10.5 on, and the
> remainder for Time Machine. Since restores can be done from the
> installer DVD, why not save the 30G space for backups? Is there a
> pitfall I'm missing?
having a backup on the same drive is not going to save you when the
drive fails. also, 30g is rather small for 10.5 (or any version of os
x for that matter).
do they really suggest this???
Warren Oates
nospam <nos...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> there is no need for a 10g partition if you have the dvd, unless you
> want to hack the installer scripts to install on unsupported machines.
> the mac pro is definitely not among those.
Don't be stupid. There are all sorts of reasons to have your installer
on a bootable partition. What I _wouldn't_ do is have my backups volume
on the same drive as my system, that's pretty stupid too. But then, I
haven't trusted anything MacFixit have said for years.
--
W. Oates
Mike Lindsay
paywall but Google's cache revealed it as I was searching for info.
Quoting MacFixit
> Use Disk Utility (you can do this with Tiger) to repartition the drive.
> As you do the repartitioning, take great care to specify the correct
> partition scheme! If you're using a PPC machine, you want the Apple
> Partition Map (the default). If you're using an Intel machine (because
> you have no PPC machines), you want the GUID partition scheme; it is
> easy to neglect this step, and if you do, and you accidentally use APM,
> you won't be able to make a Leopard bootable disk. We suggest three
> partitions:
> o A 10 GB partition to hold the clone of the Leopard DVD.
> o A 30 GB partition to hold the Leopard system.
> o All the rest to hold Time Machine backups.
> *
>
> As described in the earlier tutorial, insert your Leopard
> installer DVD into the computer and make an image file from it. Now
> "restore" (clone) the image file to the first partition on the external
> firewire drive.
> *
>
> The first partition on the external firewire drive is now
> bootable: it is a clone of the installer DVD. So boot from it! The
> effect is just as if you had booted from the installer DVD: the
> installer will offer to install Leopard. Do an erase-and-install onto
> the second partition of the external firewire drive.
>
> At the end of the installation process, the installer will
> automatically reboot the computer from the Leopard system it just
> installed on the second partition of the external drive. You will have
> to go through the usual kerfuffle about creating an initial admin user,
> declining the opportunity to subscribe to .Mac, etc. When you're all
> done, you'll be running Leopard from an external drive.
I think that I'll just install the 10G partition, leaving the rest of
the drive for Time Machine. As Warren Oates pointed out, there are
sound reasons to have the installer DVD on a bootable partition.
(Faster installs on new internal drives?) I just can't rationalize the
30G partition given that I have two bootable internal drives - one
Leopard, one Tiger.
nospam
<he...@possibly.net> wrote:
> Here's a snippet of the MacFixit article. It's hidden behind their
> paywall but Google's cache revealed it as I was searching for info.
>
> Quoting MacFixit
> > Use Disk Utility (you can do this with Tiger) to repartition the drive.
> > As you do the repartitioning, take great care to specify the correct
> > partition scheme! If you're using a PPC machine, you want the Apple
> > Partition Map (the default). If you're using an Intel machine (because
> > you have no PPC machines), you want the GUID partition scheme; it is
> > easy to neglect this step, and if you do, and you accidentally use APM,
> > you won't be able to make a Leopard bootable disk.
actually, you won't be able to *install* onto an apm partitioned drive
with an intel mac. however, if you use a powerpc mac to install to an
apm partitioned drive, it will be bootable on an intel mac.
nospam
<warren...@gmail.com> wrote:
'all sorts of reasons' ?? the only reason is if you frequently need to
boot the installer, and that is a fairly rare occurence.
Warren Oates
nospam <nos...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> 'all sorts of reasons' ?? the only reason is if you frequently need to
> boot the installer, and that is a fairly rare occurence.
It's always there, and I don't have to go looking through my drawers if
I need it. It can be added to and updated and I can use it to create a
bootable DVD of my most recent system with some useful utilities added
if I keep it under 8 or whatever gigs.
--
W. Oates