[X4U] Installing OS X from an External HD (was Daughter's Hard Drive Carnage Part 2)

[David R. Boag, DDS]

To follow up on this thread:

1. We had our son Wednesday. http://gallery.me.com/spikedds

2. I found someone with a LaCie Quadra drive and borrowed their power  
supply. It WAS the problem. LaCie is sending me another one on their  
dime. Should have it within a week or so, and then I'll be back up and  
running.

3. Now, for what to do with a new 1 TB HD: i bought an enclosure, even  
though it's only USB2, but I figure I'll use it for the Mini, which  
doesn't have FW800 anyway. OK, so I decided I wanted to do what I've  
read on MacFixIt and other places. I decided to make a partition that  
will allow me to install Leopard from a hard drive, rather than from  
the DVD(s). But I've run into a snag. Their recommendations are to  
create an image of the install DVD and then restore it onto the  
external HD on a 10GB partition. Well, I created a DCD/CDR master of  
the installer disc using Disk Utility no problem. I also have no  
trouble restoring it onto the external HD.

However, when I go to start up from the external, it will not startup.  
If I try, I get the alert: The application "Install Mac OS X" cannot  
be used from this volume. To install Mac OS X, please use the  
application provided on the Mac OS X installation disc. For the  
record, I formatted the drive using GUID, because I'm only using Intel- 
based Macs, but I have also tried it using the other format, and it  
made no difference.

Anyone run into this problem and know how to solve it?

TIA

David R. Boag, DDS

On Oct 21, 2008, at 11:09 PM, Linda wrote:

> People have reported power supply issues with LaCie, so I'd start  
> there.
>
> The good news is that a new enclosure is less than a hundred bucks,  
> and your
> data on the old might be fine.
>
> OWC makes an enclosure, quad-interface, that will hold both disks  
> for you,
> if you want to go that route.
>
> ~Linda