# Success with Firewire OSX Boot Drives?



## relaxo (Jan 7, 2003)

Hi,

Is anyone having success using an external firewire drive as a reliable boot drive?  I have a first gen G4 AGP.  I recently purchased a dual drive, single FW channel firewire external drive.  I have a publically used computer, so I wanted to keep my personal files  and OS9, OSX on an external FW drive.  I run 10.2.3 perfectly from an internal IDE drive.  However, when I use my FW drive as the boot drive, I get a lot of endlessly spinning color wheels and have to reboot all the time.   I've reinstalled the OS numerous times on this FW ext drive.  It this the norm for FW ext boot drives?  Has anyone had success with Firewire OSX Boot drives?  WHICH MODEL and BRANDS?

Thanks,

Scott


----------



## michaelsanford (Jan 7, 2003)

My iPod does a nice job. I've got Classic installed as a backup OS in case my system dies on me.


----------



## jamerican (Jan 8, 2003)

I have a 60GB drive in an ADS Firewire case to which I clone my main HD. I boot from it successfully everytime to run diagnostics on my main drive.


----------



## ksv (Jan 8, 2003)

Have you tried formatting the drive? (backup all data first if you do)

If it still doesn't work well after a reformat, you should contact the vendor of the hard drive and try to get a new drive on your warranty, if it's still covered.


----------



## edX (Jan 8, 2003)

i have heard that some of the older drives won't work as boot volumes for osx, but almost all the new ones work fine.


----------



## relaxo (Jan 8, 2003)

> _Originally posted by ksv _
> *Have you tried formatting the drive? (backup all data first if you do *



I initialized, clean installed, ran for weeks with the entire computer freezing everyday.  Not even force quit could free the spinning color wheel.  I initialized again, reinstalled with the same results and the gave up.  I did not install any 3rd party add ons either.

I don't know of any OSX formatters...are there any?  What happened to FWD HDT, etc?  I only know how to initialize an OSX drive on OSX.

Thanks,

Scott


----------



## ksv (Jan 9, 2003)

> _Originally posted by relaxo _
> *I initialized, clean installed, ran for weeks with the entire computer freezing everyday.  Not even force quit could free the spinning color wheel.  I initialized again, reinstalled with the same results and the gave up.  I did not install any 3rd party add ons either.
> 
> I don't know of any OSX formatters...are there any?  What happened to FWD HDT, etc?  I only know how to initialize an OSX drive on OSX.
> ...



Sounds like a hardware problem then. Do you know if the firewire box is 911 chipset based, or if it uses something else?
If your warrany has expired, and the hard drive itself is the problem, you could open the firewire case and replace it (ATA drives are pretty cheap these days), but you'll have more trouble if the IDE-Firewire circuit is faulty.


----------



## relaxo (Jan 9, 2003)

> _Originally posted by edX _
> *i have heard that some of the older drives won't work as boot volumes for osx, but almost all the new ones work fine. *



My Firewire enclosure is an Oxford 911 dual drive, single FW channel firewire external drive.  My boot drive was an IBM 34 GB Deskstar 7200.  That same drive is now my internal boot drive and has running perfectly for weeks now.

Does anyone use an external firewire drive as their primary boot drive on a daily basis?

Thanks again,

Scott


----------

