Can I boot my ibook from an external drive?

xithejuryx

Registered
My iBook hard drive suddenly refused to boot up in Fall of '07. There was (and, to some extent, still is) some data I hadn't had the chance to back up, so rather than wiping it clean and/or getting a new one from apple, I just put it in a crate and set it aside until I had time to deal with it.

Flash forward to last week, when I used target mode to rescue about a quarter of the unsaved data. Out of every 15 or 20 times I throw it into target mode, my Macbook Pro recognizes it maybe once or twice, and then freezes up about 5 minutes in.

I've used the install disk to attempt repairing the drive, but even when I get a "successful repair", boot-up still never goes past the grey apple screen (sans wheel), even though disk utility recognizes it as "bootable" and lets me view all of the contents.

My question, then, is - is it possible to install OSX on an external drive and boot from that? If so, how do I do it without first creating a disk image of the drive (disk utility won't allow me to save it to the external)?

Thanks a million.
 
If you can get OS X installed on the external drive, you can boot from it. As long as it's a firewire drive.
 
Start from the system installation disk by holding down the "c" key and select the external drive for installation when asked about the destination.
 
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