Quote:
Originally Posted by d-v-c
Can anyone recommend a Self Powered FireWire Drive that they use that they know Boots OS X.
I only need 80GB. Something like the SmartDisk Firelite FWFL80. Supposedly a firmware upgrade is needed, which I don't want do have to do. Want it to work out of the box.
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I just went through some games with this, and may be able to help a little.
I have two portable 160GB bus-powered drives: a G-Drive Mini (FW400 and USB2), and a FireLite (dual FW400). Both were used straight out of the box (separately) as the backup target in SD 2.1.4 on a recent MBP running 10.4.11. Each drive was connected using FW400.
The G-Drive was bootable with no special action; the FireLite was not.
The G-Drive has a Hitachi mechanism; the FireLite did not say anything meaningful ("SmartDsk [sic] FireLite Media"). In Disk Utility, Get Info on the drives both said Apple_partition_scheme, while Get Info on the lone volume of each drive was nearly identical -- both Apple_HFS, Bootable, etc. The one noticeable difference was that the G-Drive was journaled, while the FireLite drive was not. I enabled journaling on the FireLite and rebooted, but no joy.
I tried (on separate occasions) holding down the option key at boot time, and explicitly choosing the FireLite as the startup disk in System Preferences, but neither helped.
The other oddity about the FireLite was that Get Info on the device showed drive 1, partition 0, while Get Info on the volume showed drive 1, partition 4. That "4" seemed a bit high considering I hadn't really done anything to it.
Since the forums here had notes from some who indicated their FireLite was bootable, I decided to start from scratch. I erased the FireLite, electing to write all zeroes. (That took about 1.5 hours.)
Then I moved to the Partition tab and checked the options button. Apple's description is:
GUID Partition Table
To use the disk to start up an Intel-based Macintosh computer
Apple Partition Map
To use the disk to start up a PowerPC-based Macintosh computer or to use the disk as a non-startup disk with any Mac
Master Boot Record
To use the disk to start up DOS...
That seems pretty clear, so I selected the GUID Partition Table, partitioned, and backed up again with SD. This time, success! The FireLite booted straight away.
So I'm still confused, given that the G-Drive was bootable using the Apple Partition Map, but at least the FireLite boots now. (As a side note, the volume now indicates drive 1, partition 2.)