How do I boot up on my external drive?

[elgrecomac]

Well,
I bought SD2.5, installed it and made a boot-able copy of my Mac HD onto a Firewire 800 LaCie Rugged Extreme. Now for the question:

"I just went through the effort of making a boot-able copy of my internal HD: how can I test to see if works, i.e., how can I boot up on this external drive without opening up the laptop and disconnecting the internal HD?

Thank you, in advance.

[robgo]

I'm not "affiliated" with ShirtPocket, just a very satisfied user (only had one problem after several clones).

To boot from an external firewire drive:

1. Plug the drive in, make sure it appears on your desktop.

2. Go to system preferences under the apple icon at the top left of your computer.

3. Find then click on the icon for "startupdisk". Your internal and external drive should be shown there.

4. In this little preference pane, click on the icon for your external drive. It should then tell you "you have selected Mac OS X, 10.4.11 (or whatever you are using) on the volume "nameofyourexternaldrive."

5. Then click on "restart" in that preference pane.

It should then boot from your external drive (ie. it'll shut down, give the apple boing, and restart from the external drive).

If THAT doesn't work, for example the icon for your external drive doesn't show up in preferences, you can also restart and hold down the "option key" at the apple boing. It should then show you both drives that are connected to your computer (might take a while for the external drive to show). Also, if there is a problem and it doesn't show, try clicking the curvy arrow on the left to refresh it a couple times). When it does show, click the external drive icon so it is highlighted, then the fat arrow to the right, and it should load off your external drive.

If that still doesn't work, see my thread of a couple days ago. I only had this problem once (currently) after many successful clones that would successfully boot with 0 problems.

I just LOVE those little Lacie rugged drives, don't you? Only had mine since mid-December, and haven't used it much, so it remains to be seen how durable they are. Never had a problem with my older, bulky Lacies, though.

[Stray]

isn't there also a key you can hold during bootup to select another volume from which to boot?

[patrickm]

Yes. The option key.