[Zoom]

I was trying to do an archive and reinstall of Tiger on a 2-year old MacBook, and didn't have enough space. I threw out a couple big apps, some huge printer drivers that we'll never use, and the sleepimage file. Of course, it just recreated the damn sleepimage file. But anyway, now it won't even recognize a disk - CD or DVD. I put it in, it pulls it in, spins it up and down a bit, then kicks it out 30-45 sec later. It was definitely working shortly before I did the cleanup because I was running the Tiger disk. I also can't reboot to disk (put the disk in, power down quickly, reboot holding "C").

Any ideas folks?

[Simon]

If you want the sleepimage to disappear for good you need to turn off safe sleep.
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
To turn it back on use
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3

I'd guess the stuff you removed has nothing to do with the drive not working. It's probably just a coincidence. Many of these slot loading drives seem to be very unreliable. Personally I bought an external USB DVD burner just because I was so tired of screwing around with the internal slot-loader.

You can keep on trying to insert the disk and hope that eventually it will recognize it. If not, the drive's probably toast. If you have AppleCare you can have them replace the drive for free. In the meantime you could use FW TDM with another MB to finish your A&I.

[Zoom]

Do I want/need safe sleep? What's it get me, really? It's hard to justify wasting 2GB unless it's really useful.

I had some weird troubles with TDM (Target Disk Mode, for those that don't know) years back... it appeared to install the software as if the hardware were the installing computer, not the target computer. If the two machines aren't the same in terms of wifi and bluetooth, for example, there would be an issue (one had them, one didn't). Today, I guess, even desktops have built-in wifi and BT... but when I did it, they didn't, and this caused some problems.

[Simon]

If you want to exchange batteries w/o switching off the MB or if you want to make sure your session is preserved even when the battery runs totally down you need SS. If you don't care about those things you can turn it off. IMHO more important than the saved disk space is that w/o SS going to sleep is almost instant.

What you observed with TDM is how it's supposed to work. In TDM the installer runs on the host Mac and hence installs that system. The external disk is just that, an external FW disk. The installer doesn't know it's connected to a computer and it doesn't know anything about that computer. It sees it as just another external disk as if it were in any FW case.

If you can get your MB's installer DVD to install OS X from another computer, you will get a proper install on your MB's HD even through TDM. What isn't a good idea is to use an older install DVD (IOW an installer disk that's older than the MB) to install the system. The easiest is therefore of course to do it with an identical (or newer) MB. Maybe a friend's? Or maybe an AASP can help out. I once had an AASP let me use a MBP that was on display for something similar.

[Zoom]

I understand why it works the way it works, but how many people have two of the same machine? I guess the real question is: how different is the install based on the type of machine you're installing to? That is, how much customization does the installer do based on the HW platform it detects?

My guess is that the Apple Remote admin utilities are a lot smarter, but of course they cost lots of money, too.

Good info on the sleepimage thing. I hate waiting for it to sleep - never put 2 and 2 together on why it takes so long, but this makes perfect sense. And if I understand you correctly, this is just about preserving your session - there's no harm done if you swap batteries and lose your session, right? Same as shutting down and then replacing the battery, correct?

[Simon]

It's not quite the same. With SS off and no power connected swapping the battery is essentially like yanking the power cord on a desktop. Everything that isn't saved is gone. Not a good idea.

With SS off you need to either connect power or shut down the MB entirely before you replace the battery.

Regarding FW TDM you need to remind yourself of what is actually happening. It's not that the installer isn't being smart. The problem is that there's no running computer to query for information. It's just a remote FW controller routing FW traffic to and from the remote disk. The remote system itself isn't actually running. This is entirely different from remote administration because there a host can actually query the client and get information about its hardware and specs. It couldn't do so if the client were turned off which is essentially the case when you use FW TDM.

[seanc]

I might be missing something here, but I'll give it a shot.

My understanding is that your optical drive in your MBP is toast and you need/want to do an Archive & Install in it, right? You have the install discs for your MBP right?

I'm 99.9% sure that you could pop the MBP install discs into your iMac and boot it into TDM. Then, hook the firewire cable up between your iMac and the MBP. Reboot the MBP and hold down option to get a list of bootable volumes, the disc from the iMac should show up.

[Simon]

Yep. IIRC that should work.