Home » forums » Discussion » PowerPC Macs

HELP! Rebooting from external firewire drive-Internal SMART failure

Submitted by PBookish on July 4, 2007 - 11:09pm. PowerPC Macs

My Powerbook's (G4 15" 1.33 ghz running Tiger) hard drive has finally FAILED. I knew it was coming..I have everything backed up on an external firewire drive. My powerbook finally refused to boot up completely today. I already ordered a new hard drive from iFixit and I plan to install it myself.

Thing is I don't know how to reboot using my firewire drive or whether it is possible now.Can I do it eventhough my internal HD has failed?

thanks in advance for advice.

» login or register to post comments | previous forum topic | next forum topic

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
coius's picture

key tricks

Submitted by coius on July 4, 2007 - 11:50pm.

hold down the "option" key once you hear the chime. A selector will come up and you can select the drive you want to boot. if you don't see the icon come up, then the FW drive doesn't have a proper OS.
What you would do then, would be to take your PB's Tiger disc, and do an archived install onto the FW Drive. that should get you up and running Smiling

» troubleshootnow.com. When you need to troubleshoot NOW! Forum site for macs and PCs. We are happy to help you troubleshoot. Home WebPage: coius.info <-Served off an iMac in my roo

login or register to post comments

... Of course, everything coi

Submitted by TheUltimateMacUser on July 5, 2007 - 12:50pm.

... Of course, everything coius said depends on the FW enclosure being bootable.

I've come across a few that simply cannot be booted off of, due to an oddball chipset, or whatever.

» My Freeware
Unofficial AppleFritter IRC client [.zip]

login or register to post comments

Thanks for the replies. I

Submitted by PBookish on July 5, 2007 - 4:36pm.

Thanks for the replies.

I made my FW HD bootable with Super Duper so once I knew what button to press, booting from the drive was no problem!.

Thanks

»
login or register to post comments
grannysmith's picture

Booting from external FireWire drive

Submitted by grannysmith on July 8, 2007 - 7:49pm.

Be aware, so that if it happens you are not desolate, that using SuperDuper! to make its Smart Backup bootable does not ensure that this will happen. The drive enclosure's bridge board must include the Oxford bridge chip 911 or 912, and not the Prolific bridge. The contribution of SuperDuper! is important, but it is not enough without the bridge chip.

Many/most aftermarket enclosures from Asia use the Prolific chip. The Oxford chip is used by LaCie, perhaps among many others, but those 'others' do not include the Asian makers.

de

» Apple IIe; (68K) 17DT & 4PB; (PPC) 13DT & 3PB; (G3) 6DT. System 6.0.8 to OS 10.4.x

login or register to post comments