[fisherKing]

i have a g4 powermac.
i did a clean install of 10.3 last week, as i was having problems.
last night, the mac crashed, and when i try to boot up, i get the "no" symbol ( i know this means "cannot find BootX on the startup disk"

diskwarrior's hardware test tells me the drive is damaged, and will fail.

can i install osx on the firewire drive and use that exclusively?? ( i have run it that way before)

ie can i not use the internal drive at all & operate my mac??

[Randman]

There may be other ways, but with Carbon Copy Cloner, you can make a bootable copy onto an external drive.

[Detrius]

This depends on which G4 you have. Those w/AGP can boot from firewire.

You should get your data off the drive ASAP--before you get applications and the likes off of it. It may not last long enough for you to get the whole thing.

Then again, you may get a few more months out of it--but I wouldn't risk that with your data.

[SSharon]

first, backup all data. is your firewire drive a home built one or a premade one? If its home made why not just take the drive out of it and put it in the G4? Also if you plan on booting from it make sure that its level (horizontal or verticle, just not at an angle) and is well ventilated.

[frankiec]

Originally posted by fisherKing:
can i install osx on the firewire drive and use that exclusively?? ( i have run it that way before)

I ran OS X exclusively for a year from an external FireWire drive when the hard drive in my iBook died. I had no problems and no apparent speed decrease.

[Phil Sherry]

i've had to boot from an iPod before now, because the main drive in a machine was misbehaving.

as everyone else has said: get those backups done, and look into a new drive.

[JKT]

FWIW, you can install OS X onto the external simply by having it attached when you insert the installer CD (or boot from it) - there is no need to clone your failing drive and you may end up with a borked system if you go that route. When it comes to the point where you get to choose the destination for the installation, just choose the external hard drive (you may need to use Disk Utility to format the external first). I ran an iMac DV from an external for over 2 years - no issues whatsoever apart from the occasional times when I accidentally knocked the FW cable out of the port!

One issue that could occur with what you are hoping to do is that the internal drive may cause the Finder to misbehave/freeze if you leave it installed as the system will still try to mount that disk each time you boot (as an "external" drive to your boot disk, now in the external firewire casing). If the drive is indeed failing, then it could confuse the system. Once you have the data from your old internal drive, I would consider removing it. However, if you are going to have to do that anyway, why not simply get a new drive to put in its place?

[frankiec]

Originally posted by JKT:
One issue that could occur with what you are hoping to do is that the internal drive may cause the Finder to misbehave/freeze if you leave it installed as the system will still try to mount that disk each time you boot (as an "external" drive to your boot disk, now in the external firewire casing). If the drive is indeed failing, then it could confuse the system. Once you have the data from your old internal drive, I would consider removing it. However, if you are going to have to do that anyway, why not simply get a new drive to put in its place?

I had a DEAD hard drive in my iBook for a YEAR. The iBook booted off the external FireWire drive fine. Sometimes it would try to boot off the broken internal drive making it click for 10 seconds but when it knew it couldn't boot off of it the iBook moved onto the FireWire drive. The Finder didn't know about the hard drive -- it was DEAD.

There were no problems and it's a great example of the Mac's robustness down to the firmware level.

[cc_foo]

I've booted off a FW800 drive on my PowerBook. Everything was so much faster than the internal drive. iPhoto 5 especially.

This was a PB15" aluminium 1.25GHz, 700MB+ RAM, 80GB internal, 200GB external.

[powerbook911]

If I install OSX on an external firewire drive, is there a way for me to transfer all my settings from my main hard drive, as if I was using the setup assistant between two firewire Macs?

[Big Mac]

If your internal drive is in good condition just clone it, powerbook911. On the other hand, if you're in a situation similar to the OP's, you should proceed with caution and rescue your data ASAP.