Booting from external devices Was: [HM] hummmmmm

[Duane Murphy]

--- At Sat, 12 Nov 2005 08:47:30 -0500, Technophobic_Tom at comcast.net wrote:

>At 6:23 AM +0000 on 11/12/05, "michaelP" 
><michael at sandwich-de-sign.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>...can any initialisable (read/write) storage device act
>>as...a boot drive with a blessed System Folder sitting on it?
>>For example, a Zip or USB Flash Drive, as well as another
>>external hard drive?
>>
>>And, if so, does one need to use Drive Setup to best realise this?
>
>It would seem so.  I know that removable media drives such as Zip and 
>Jazz drives can selected as the startup device and of course 
>external, fixed media, hard drives can.  Remember, the blessed System 
>Folder is necessary but not sufficient.  You MUST have the driver for 
>the device installed WITH the System Folder.  

>I don't think external 
>firewire drives can be made bootable.  At least not in all 
>configurations.

I just wanted to correct this. As far as I know, FireWire drives can
always be made bootable. USB drives however usually cannot. The problem
is with how USB and FireWire are addressed on the bus. FireWire has a
fixed identifier for every device. USB devices are identified by their
position on the bus. If you move a device, it will have a new address
and therefore the system can't work out how to boot from it.

 ...Duane