[m021478]

I recently purchased an 8GB LaCie CurrenKey USB Flash Drive and I'd like to be able to configure the drive as a bootable all-purpose utility disk that I can use to boot my MacPro or Unibody Macbook Pro...

My ideal utility disk would be to create two partitions on the the Lacie flash drive - one would be used to install a bootable copy of Leopard on to use for a variety of troubleshooting methods; and on the other partition I would install a bootable copy of the latest version of Disk Warrior.

I tried doing this but quickly found out that even a trimmed down version of Leopard (without all of the printer drivers, fonts, X11, etc...) pretty much winds up filling the entire USB drive (when partitioned just once)...This definitely doesn't leave me any room to install any Leopard updates once the drive is up and running, nor does it allow me to create a second partition for a bootable copy of Disk Warrior.

At one point in the past I saw a program called Protogo by Micromat which would allow a very very minimal version of OS X on any drive you wanted, but I also read the fine print and noticed that their latest version owill work to create a bootable partition on all PPC & Intel Macs, except for the recently released MacBook & MacBook Pro that came out in October 2008. This happens to be the MacBook Pro model that I was hoping to use this Utility Drive on...

My specific questions are:

* Does anyone know of another way I can approach this dilemma?
* Is what I am trying to do here even possible?
* If in the end, it is possible if I just wanted it to boot my Mac Pro and not my MacBook Pro, how would I go about doing this without requiring that I purchase Protogo?
* Any other thoughts?

Thanks!!

[mduell]

Spend the $16 on a 16GB USB drive.

I bet that LaCrap cost a fortune, too.

[B Gallagher]

Your install of Leopard's taking up close to 8GB?? Unless I'm remembering incorrectly, if you deselect everything you don't need, you should be able to get it down to about 5GB.

I know Tiger had a much smaller footprint - closer to 2GB or so. Here's hoping Snow Leopard will have a similarly much smaller footprint.

But yes, get a 16GB USB drive.

[m021478]

Originally Posted by mduell 

Spend the $16 on a 16GB USB drive.

I bet that LaCrap cost a fortune, too.

The leCrap cost $29, and it looks like a coin, which is an indispensable asset to anyone!

Originally Posted by B Gallagher 

Your install of Leopard's taking up close to 8GB?? Unless I'm remembering incorrectly, if you deselect everything you don't need, you should be able to get it down to about 5GB.

I know Tiger had a much smaller footprint - closer to 2GB or so. Here's hoping Snow Leopard will have a similarly much smaller footprint.

But yes, get a 16GB USB drive.

A minimal install of Leopard comes out to about 6.2GB if I remember correctly. Then once you install all of the latest updates, you add just over 1GB to the mix...My 8GB LaCie drive says it holds 8GB but in reality only holds about 7.2GB

16GB...here I come!

[mduell]

$16 after $10 MIR, free shipping

[B Gallagher]

I'll take your word for it. Don't forget, you'll need enough extra free space on the partition that you install Leopard to download and extract any updates.

The partition for Disk Warrior would be around 1GB right? I would Leopard as much free space as you can.