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Zaurus · Mar 5, 2005, 03:47 AM

i just bought a 250GB HDD for backup on my OSX

it comes with a USB 2.0/Firewire external box

i want to partition this drive with 40GB HFS+/130GB FAT32 / 80GB NTFS

so i can use Carbon Cloner to backup my iBook OSX drive to this 40GB HFS+ partition once a while
and whenever there's something happens
i can use Target-T mode to boot right off my Firewire 40GB HFS+ partition

so what are some approaches to this issue?
thanks

Zaurus · Mar 5, 2005, 03:55 AM

i guess my HFS+ need to be bootable.. so OpenFirmware will pick it up on Target-T mode?

and i heard from macosxhints, OpenFirmware doesn't deal with MBR
so what can i do about it?
thanks

Zaurus · Mar 5, 2005, 03:09 PM

no one knows?

PubGuy · Mar 5, 2005, 08:03 PM

Never done it, so don't know for sure, but I have read elsewhere that the OS X partition should be the first partition of the external drive. Other than that, I really don't know.

chabig · Mar 5, 2005, 08:26 PM

You can partition as you wish and boot from the cloned copy of your internal hard drive without a problem. There is no special procedures to follow. It just works.

Chris

CharlesS · Mar 5, 2005, 09:05 PM

Originally posted by PubGuy:
Never done it, so don't know for sure, but I have read elsewhere that the OS X partition should be the first partition of the external drive. Other than that, I really don't know.

Nah, I think this was with the beige G3s only.

Zaurus · Mar 5, 2005, 09:06 PM

thanks

so even i use FDISK_partition_scheme .... and set the first partition as HFS+
should be okay?

chabig · Mar 6, 2005, 03:04 AM

Zaurus, you'll be OK no matter how you do it. There are absolutely no restrictions to the partition scheme.

Chris

CharlesS · Mar 6, 2005, 03:11 AM

Originally posted by chabig:
Zaurus, you'll be OK no matter how you do it. There are absolutely no restrictions to the partition scheme.

Chris

Yeah, I've booted OS X from all sorts of different partitions. When I'm getting ready to release something, I tend to put 10.2 on one partition, 10.1 on another, and 10.3 on my main partition in order to test on all OS versions. It works fine.

I think this restriction applies only to beige G3s. There was also a size limit - 8 GB or something similarly lame. On anything with built-in USB ports it shouldn't matter what partition you use.

malvolio · Mar 6, 2005, 03:56 AM

Originally posted by CharlesS:
I think this restriction applies only to beige G3s. There was also a size limit - 8 GB or something similarly lame. On anything with built-in USB ports it shouldn't matter what partition you use.

OS X had to be on a partition within the first 8 GB on any Macs before the slot-loading G3 iMacs, I believe.

Zaurus · Mar 6, 2005, 04:33 PM

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Yeah, I've booted OS X from all sorts of different partitions. When I'm getting ready to release something, I tend to put 10.2 on one partition, 10.1 on another, and 10.3 on my main partition in order to test on all OS versions. It works fine.

I think this restriction applies only to beige G3s. There was also a size limit - 8 GB or something similarly lame. On anything with built-in USB ports it shouldn't matter what partition you use.

so how should i partition mine if i wanna boot from target t mode?

i want to have both FAT32 and HFS+

thanks

CharlesS · Mar 6, 2005, 07:07 PM

Originally posted by Zaurus:
so how should i partition mine if i wanna boot from target t mode?

i want to have both FAT32 and HFS+

thanks

I believe (someone correct me if I'm wrong) that Target mode should mount all partitions belonging to the boot drive.

Anubis IV · Mar 6, 2005, 09:47 PM

If you just use Startup Manager by holding down the Option key on startup, all of the bootable partitions will be available as choices to select from. There's nothing special to do...really.

Zaurus · Mar 6, 2005, 10:07 PM

Originally posted by Anubis IV:
If you just use Startup Manager by holding down the Option key on startup, all of the bootable partitions will be available as choices to select from. There's nothing special to do...really.

oh really?
thanks
i will try that

Detrius · Mar 7, 2005, 12:38 AM

Originally posted by chabig:
Zaurus, you'll be OK no matter how you do it. There are absolutely no restrictions to the partition scheme.

Chris

I believe PC hard disks use a different format for the partition table, so for the partitions to even be recognizable on a PC, it would have to be in that format. However, that is likely going to make the disk not bootable on a Mac. If it is bootable on a Mac, I can imagine that it wouldn't be bootable on a PC. You may have serious problems with this, but the only way to know for sure is to try.

note that it's the same hardware either way, just a different format for storing data.

tooki · Mar 7, 2005, 01:01 AM

Originally posted by malvolio:
OS X had to be on a partition within the first 8 GB on any Macs before the slot-loading G3 iMacs, I believe.

This affects only Mac OS X booting from ATA disks coonected to the motherboard IDE controller in the beige G3, Wallstreet PowerBook G3, and tray-loading G3 iMacs. If the boot disk is SCSI, or the drives are on a PCI ATA card, or it's booting Mac OS 9 or earlier, the limitation does not apply. The few pre-beige G3 Macs that can boot Mac OS X (using XpostFacto) all do not have onboard IDE, so the problem does not occur.

Note that the specific limitation is that the Mac OS X boot partition must be entirely contained within the first 8GB of the disk. Since the first few MB of the disk are occupied by disk drivers and partition tables, the partition itself needs to be smaller than 8GB.

As for the original question of mixing Mac and Windows partitions: it can be done, but it's a hack, and neither OS really likes it.

tooki