install OSX from an extern CD-Drive

B

Bisi.f

Registered
hi,

i have an ibook clamshell tangerine. i think the intern (original) cd-drive wasnt working any more after i formated the harddisk (--> no OS). so i decided to buy an extern BenQ USB CD-RW Drive and just simply install Mac osx from this extern device but it wasnt as easy as i thought, it didnt do anything. it was the same as before. i just see a folder with a questionmark in it in the middle of the screen.

please help me.

THANKS TO ALL OF YOU
 
The internal CD drive should work even without any OS on the hard drive. You just need to tell the computer to boot from the CD drive. Try this:

1) Pop in the Mac OS X Install CD into the internal CD-ROM drive.
2) Reboot or start up, whichever you need to do.
3) Immediately after booting/rebooting, hold down the 'C' key on the keyboard and keep it held down. This tells the computer to boot from the CD-ROM drive.
4) The Mac OS X Install CD should boot soon, and if it looks like the CD is booting (you get an Apple logo or something on the screen), then it's safe to release the 'C' key.
 
thank you for your fast reply,

but i already tried this before. And when i hold down the C-Key the cd-Drive makes strange sounds. and thats why i think the cd-drive doesnt work.

thank you again for your reply.
 
Booting from a USB CD is always questionable, especially so with an OS X boot. If everything is working perfectly, then you could eventually boot to something, but booting will take a long time. The USB drive is OK for reading files, but a boot from that drive will be really slow, if it boots at all. This doesn't leave you with many options. The only good way to boot to OS X from an external drive? If you have a FireWire port... (or USB 2, which isn't possible on a clamshell iBook)
 
Don't start up from an external USB device

If you select a USB startup disk from System Preferences, in some cases the computer may not start up from the USB disk.

This is expected behavior.

Under Mac OS X, Apple does not support starting up from USB devices. Although some configurations may allow a USB volume to be selected as a startup volume via the Startup Manager, this may not work for all configurations, and Apple is unable to provide assistance in troubleshooting such configurations.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106474
 
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