Boot from USB2 External?

[lombarke]

Hey guys...this is just a general question, really. Can macs (new or old) boot from an external drive that is USB2? I thought I remember seeing something about only being able to boot from firewire, but looking at this new MacBook Pro, it doesn't have a FW800 port on it...and if FW in general is going to get the boot, then can the new macs boot from USB devices??

Any help?

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

No, they cannot boot from USB devices. Some older Macintosh computers with USB 1.1 ports may be able to, but no recent Macintosh computers can boot from USB 2.0 devices.

FireWire is not going away. It's the de-facto standard for DV cameras right now, and rumors of Apple dropping FireWire altogether are just unfounded rumors.

 

[lombarke]

No, they cannot boot from USB devices. Some older Macintosh computers with USB 1.1 ports may be able to, but no recent Macintosh computers can boot from USB 2.0 devices.

FireWire is not going away. It's the de-facto standard for DV cameras right now, and rumors of Apple dropping FireWire altogether are just unfounded rumors.

that is what i thought (on the booting issue). and i know that firewire may never completely disappear...i just hope it's not a situation where they remove it from just the laptops in the future or something. i don't know...apple's definitely not one of those companies that does absolutely retarded things (most of the time), but ya never know. Thanks for your help, though! Excellent.

 

[perfessor101]

Some older Macintosh computers with USB 1.1 ports may be able to, but no recent Macintosh computers can boot from USB 2.0 devices.

No Mac running OS X has ever been able to boot from a USB device. The USB device drivers are loaded from the hard drive during the boot process and so are not available to start the boot process.