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mr breaker · 02:48 PM

Not sure which category this should be posted in...

I have an Intel mac mini. I am using an external Firewire drive that has two partitions on it. Previously I had 10.4 (PPC) installed on one of the partitions using my old G4.

Now I'd like to do a clean install of OS X (intel) for a backup on the drive. When I start up from the Install disc it shows me the drive, but it says it can't install onto it because it's not a bootable disc.

But I can boot up from the OS X (PPC) install that is currently on it (on another PPC machine). Is this a software issue, or do I need to change the way the jumpers are set on the external drive?

The drive is a:

Western Digital Caviar RE WD3200SB 320GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive

Thanks!

Big Mac · Mar 17, 2006, 02:36 PM

You have to reformat the disk.

mr breaker · Mar 17, 2006, 02:49 PM

I have to reformat the entire external disc? Or just the partition that I am trying to install it onto?

CharlesS · Mar 17, 2006, 03:10 PM

You have to reformat the whole disc, because the disc is formatted with an Apple Partition Map (APM), which is what the Mac OS has always used up until the Intel Macs. Unfortunately, the Intel Macs can't boot from a disk with an APM - they need to be formatted with a GUID Partition Table (GPT). Of course, GPT disks won't be able to be read by any Mac OS version earlier than Tiger. Isn't that great?

Or at least, that is what was the common knowledge. Now this guy claims to have a workaround to get an Intel Mac to boot from an APM disk. You might want to give it a try if you need to have the disk still bootable on your PowerPC machines.

mr breaker · Mar 17, 2006, 03:30 PM

Thanks for the info...I had no idea that changed.

Can PPC machines running 10.4 read the discs with the new format? What about Windows machines, would they be able to read this new format?

I'm not really concerned with booting from my external drive on other machines, but I would like to be able to at least read/write to the drive from them.

CharlesS · Mar 17, 2006, 04:27 PM

Originally Posted by mr breaker

Thanks for the info...I had no idea that changed.

Can PPC machines running 10.4 read the discs with the new format? What about Windows machines, would they be able to read this new format?

According to the article I linked to, it's gotta be 10.4.2 or higher. If you're running 10.4.5 on the PPC machine, it should work.

Windows, on the other hand, won't be able to read your disk unless you reformat it in FAT, since Windows can't read the HFS+ format.

mr breaker · Mar 18, 2006, 05:09 PM

Just for anyone else in this situation:

I was able to successfully install and boot OS X (Intel) on an external firewire drive partitioned with the APM format.

I did it by restoring a dmg onto it while booted from my internal drive.

And unrelated, for some reason when booted from the OS X disc, Disk Utility failed everytime I tried to restore a dmg, either onto my internal drive, or external. I could only do it booted from a physical drive.

CharlesS · Mar 18, 2006, 05:59 PM

So the procedure on that site was correct... interesting. I wonder why the installer doesn't let you put the OS on an APM disk.

mr breaker · Mar 19, 2006, 12:49 PM

Not sure why.

I installed Windows XP on my FAT partition. After I did the installed it renamed the partition to "Untitled". I'd like to rename this within OS X to WindowsXP. I tried using the diskutil program, but it gave me this error:

Code:
mini-core-duo:/usr/sbin dave$ sudo diskutil rename Untitled WindowsXP   
sudo: can't mkdir /var/run/sudo: No such file or directory

We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System
Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:

    #1) Respect the privacy of others.
    #2) Think before you type.
    #3) With great power comes great responsibility.

sudo: unable to initialize PAM: Bad file descriptor
mini-core-duo:/usr/sbin dave$ sendmail: fatal: open /etc/postfix/main.cf: No such file or directory

mini-core-duo:/usr/sbin dave$

Anyone have any ideas how I can rename this partition? (It won't let me rename it in the Finder)

Thanks!

goMac · Mar 19, 2006, 03:03 PM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

You have to reformat the whole disc, because the disc is formatted with an Apple Partition Map (APM), which is what the Mac OS has always used up until the Intel Macs. Unfortunately, the Intel Macs can't boot from a disk with an APM - they need to be formatted with a GUID Partition Table (GPT). Of course, GPT disks won't be able to be read by any Mac OS version earlier than Tiger. Isn't that great?

I was under the impression an Intel Mac CAN boot from APM (The Mac OS Intel Install DVD is APM for example). However, the Intel DVD is set up to only install to a GPT formatted disk. Nifty, ain't it?

CharlesS · Mar 19, 2006, 03:41 PM

Originally Posted by goMac

I was under the impression an Intel Mac CAN boot from APM (The Mac OS Intel Install DVD is APM for example). However, the Intel DVD is set up to only install to a GPT formatted disk. Nifty, ain't it?

Did you read the whole thread?

Or even the second part of that post (the part you didn't quote)?