can i install os 9 drivers afterwards?

T

tkdragon

Registered
when you choose to format a HD in os x disk utility, you have the option of installing the os 9 drivers so os 9 can recognize the disc (i assume). anyway, i made the mistake of NOT installing them on my large HD, thinking i would only use 9 on my small HD. now when i boot up on the small HD, all i can see is the small HD since there aren't any 9 drivers on the large one.

so my question is: is there any way to install OS9 drivers my large HD without re-formatting the drive? just as an addition or something?
 
Mac OS 9 should not have any problems "seeing" your HFS+ drive with or without drivers. The drivers are only needed to allow Mac OS 9 to boot from that drive.

If Mac OS 9 isn't "seeing" your other drive, it may not have been formatted as HFS+.
 
racerx - i believe tkd is right about this one. if you don't install the os 9 drivers on your main drive, any boot from os 9 will fail to mount the drive. don't ask me why but it works this way. i accidently did a reformat without them a while back and quickly discovered this. another reformat and it worked fine.

and no tkd, there's no way to install them without reformatting.
 
I think the reason for this is that OS X does NOT use a software driver that resides on the hard disk itself, whereas OS 9 does.
 
Can you boot from the OS 9 CD, run Disk Utility, and choose Update Drivers? Or is the small partition for it not there?
 
edX said:
racerx - i believe tkd is right about this one. if you don't install the os 9 drivers on your main drive, any boot from os 9 will fail to mount the drive. don't ask me why but it works this way. i accidently did a reformat without them a while back and quickly discovered this. another reformat and it worked fine.
Click to expand...

I don't have the Mac OS 9 drivers in installed on this system, and booting from Mac OS 9 on a second drive and from two different CDs (Mac OS 9 install CD and TechTools Deluxe CD) all see my Mac OS X drive without the drivers without any problems.

Only time I haven't seen a drive when booting from Mac OS 9 while on Mac hardware was when the other drive was UFS formatted.

Mac OS 9 can read any... let me stress that; ANY HFS or HFS+ drive. It needs the drivers on the boot sector of a drive to be able to boot from that drive though.

Example: Most data CDs for Macs are HFS, but just putting Mac OS 9 on one of these CDs does not make them bootable. That requires an additional step. But that additional step is not needed to read or mount them with Mac OS 9.
 
RacerX, I might have to second edX's comments... I installed Mac OS X on a secondary drive and elected NOT to install the Mac OS 9 drivers. When I boot into OS 9, sure enough, the Mac OS X drive without the OS 9 drivers cannot be seen (at least, it doesn't mount) under OS 9.

Perhaps you DID install the OS 9 drivers erroneously, or your setup is unique... I don't know, I'm not saying I don't believe you, but in my experience, NOT installing OS 9 drivers prevents the drive from being seen under OS 9.

The understanding I have of this is that Mac OS X does not use a software driver written to the hard drive to mount and access drives, whereas OS 9 does. If OS 9 does not see that driver written to the drive, then it will not mount the drive.
 
yea, all i've got to base my statement upon is my experience. i can't explain why it would differ from yours racerx, but it does. when it happened i had assumed things were as you state but for some reason, having nothing to do with hfs vs hfs+, that was what happened. my internal drive would not mount nor be recognised by utilities when any os 9 boot medium was used. that included utility cd's and external fw drives.
 
Hummm...

I guess I could be wrong... nah! I'm never wrong!

Lets see, I have an extra system here and a couple extra drives. Lets give it a try...


:confused:
 

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huh? i'm sorry, i don't see anything in the image(s) inside the cross hairs.actually they're so small i can't identify much of anything in them other than my name :p . so did it work or not? i'm curious what happened.
 
edX said:
huh? i'm sorry, i don't see anything in the image(s) inside the cross hairs.actually they're so small i can't identify much of anything in them other than my name :p . so did it work or not? i'm curious what happened.
Click to expand...

I did a controlled test. I took images of the results. I posted them. I can see all the icons in the last image which was the system booted from my TechTools CD (9.2.2).

:rolleyes:

If you can see the trash icon at the bottom of that image, you can see the results just as clearly.

:confused:

What do you see?
 

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Okay, Racer, now you're just trying to confuse us.

I see the Techtool CD icon and the Trash icon and nothing else on the Desktop; is that what we're supposed to see?
 
RacerX said:
I did a controlled test. I took images of the results. I posted them. I can see all the icons in the last image which was the system booted from my TechTools CD (9.2.2).

:rolleyes:

If you can see the trash icon at the bottom of that image, you can see the results just as clearly.

:confused:

What do you see?
Click to expand...

RacerX must have his vision persistence turned up too high :) The drive icon must be burned into your retina.... :D
 
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