External CD Drive Will Not Boot From CD

co19

co19

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Problem: I need to boot from an external USB optical drive with another OS's cd (linux, windows, etc)

I am trying to install some other operating systems ontop of my mac, but sadly my optical drive is broken and cannot read any large DVD's, but it can read small CD's, just not blank ones. So I bought a mac compatible USB external cd/dvd drive but when I restart and hold alt, my computer does not recognize it.

Extra Info: If I want to boot from OS X Snow Leopard on the external drive, it will work, but for no other cd. Including a burned version of Linux or a commercial release version of linux.

Computer Info: It is a MacBook Pro first generation, and I just reformatted and started fresh with Snow Leopard. I used the external optical drive and was hoping to have 4 OS's on it, I know how to do it, but I just cant get the install cd/dvd's to be recognized.

Thanks, Dillon
 
It would probably be best if you used Boot Camp to install Linux, etc, on your Mac. I don't have much experience with Intel Macs, but I would think Boot Camp would be your best bet.
 
co19 said:
Extra Info: If I want to boot from OS X Snow Leopard on the external drive, it will work, but for no other cd. Including a burned version of Linux or a commercial release version of linux.
Click to expand...
Your computer will only natively boot Mac OS X (and some Linux distros).

If you wish to boot from a Windows install CD, you must use Boot Camp -- you cannot boot from the Windows CD natively. Your Mac does not have a BIOS (instead it has EFI), which is required to boot a Windows CD. Boot Camp tricks Windows into thinking it does, though, and allows you to boot from the CD.

What architecture are the Linux CDs for? i386? x64? PowerPC?
 
I've tried a 32 bit (i386) for intel one for ubuntu, but had a retail version of fedora version 2 (came with a book) lying around and tried that too.

But thanks ElDiabloConCaca, that makes a lot of sense for why windows wasn't booting at all. But for linux it's still a different story, because if I put it into my built in optical drive it will see it and boot from it, just while installing it gives out and ejects the disk. But if I put it on the external optical drive and try to startup from the cd, it just stays at a white screen for a few minutes then gives me a nice question mark..
 
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