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harrisjamieh · Oct 16, 2005, 04:39 AM

Hi, i know you can use an external hard drive to boot from with Mac, but this wouild not always practical if I am out and about on my iBook, but would be good when I am at home as it would give me extra speed because of the 7200 vs 4200. Is there anyway to tell me iBook to boot from an external drive when it is connected and to boot from the internal disk when it is not connected?

megasad · Oct 16, 2005, 06:47 AM

Set the external drive, whilst connected, as the Startup Disk in System Preferences. When connected at bootup, the iBook will use the external drive and when not connected, the iBook will look for a bootable system for a bit and use the internal drive. This will not work with a USB drive, as far as I know, only a FireWire one.

harrisjamieh · Oct 16, 2005, 07:06 AM

Thanks very much I will try that when I buy an external in about a week

macanon · Oct 26, 2005, 09:44 PM

Can you get an external bus powered firewire 7200rpm drive?

megasad · Oct 27, 2005, 05:22 AM

Originally Posted by macanon

Can you get an external bus powered firewire 7200rpm drive?

So long as it's a 2.5" hard drive, yes. Not a 3.5" one though.

nJm · Oct 27, 2005, 05:26 AM

How would you get around using two different copies of OS X? Is there something that could sync up all your files and preferences, or would it be possible to store all your Home folders on the internal drive, so that it is shared between the two OS X installations?

amazing · Oct 28, 2005, 08:44 PM

Originally Posted by nJm

How would you get around using two different copies of OS X? Is there something that could sync up all your files and preferences, or would it be possible to store all your Home folders on the internal drive, so that it is shared between the two OS X installations?

Buy a 5400 or 7200 rpm 2.5" HD, insert in firewire mobile case (macally makes a nice 2.5" fw-400/usb 2.0 case, plenty others exist.)

Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your present drive to the external firewire drive. Voilà!

nJm · Oct 29, 2005, 04:21 AM

This has got me thinking... I was about to get an 80gb HD installed in my iBook but that meant paying for 2 hours labor to get it put in. If I can use that extra AU$120 to get a much bigger, faster external 3.5" drive I could use that to boot off when I'm at home, as when I'm using it as a portable it is just internet and word processing so I don't really need the extra stuff.

Thanks for the inspiration!

amazing · Oct 29, 2005, 10:49 AM

Originally Posted by nJm

This has got me thinking... I was about to get an 80gb HD installed in my iBook but that meant paying for 2 hours labor to get it put in. If I can use that extra AU$120 to get a much bigger, faster external 3.5" drive I could use that to boot off when I'm at home, as when I'm using it as a portable it is just internet and word processing so I don't really need the extra stuff.

Thanks for the inspiration!

Glad the suggestion worked! I did somewhat the same thing with my lack of a superdrive, namely buying an external case and sticking the latest and fastest (including DL, tho no use for that, yet) DVD-burner in. Here, that comes to $45 for the fw-400/usb 2.0 case and $55 for the burner, plus freight. Then, I get to move it around amongst many different Macs, merrily burning away. Also, much faster than any built-in Superdrive!

Since SATA HDs are all the rage now, many manufacturers are putting rebates on their IDE drives, so you can find some great deals on bare drives. Sticking them in a fw-400 case is a cinch.

Just one tip: be sure it has a Oxford 911 or 912 bridge. Macs can boot off firewire provided the case has the right bridge--and many PC bridges don't work.