Tech support toolkit

Whitehill

Whitehill

Registered
I want to put together a toolkit to diagnose sick Macs. My plan is to install 10.6.7 on an external, bootable firewire disk. I own and will also install DiskWarrior 4.? and Techtool Pro 6.

What else should I put there? If there's already a thread about this, more or less, please point me at it.
 
I have a 1TB drive from OWC that is both Firewire and USB (Bus Powered)

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go

It is partitioned into 5 partitions

10.5 Diag - 30GB
10.6 Diag - 65GB
10.5 Installer - 13GB
10.6 Installer - 13GB
and Extra - that holds files. - 810GB

On the 10.5 and 10.6 Diags - the tools I use the most are:
Disk Warrior
Disk Utility
Data Rescue 3
Drive Genius 3
WhatSize
Also installed are the following:
SuperDuper - Carbon Copy Cloner
EntourAid
EasyFind
PhotoRescue
SpeedTools
TechTools

On the Extra Partion - I have all sorts of updates and program installers
IE and Apple Folder with Installers and Updates for the most common Apple items (OS updates, iLife Disc Images, Etc...) Adobe Folder with Installers and updates, Microsoft Folder with Installers and Updates (Office 2004-2011), Retrospect folder with installers, Parallels folder with installers - Updaters - and Windows Disk Images, 3rd Party Supplemental Folder (Flip4Mac, Perian, Onyx, Dock Library with Revamped skin, Dropbox, Evernote, Firefox, Chrome installers) and a Misc DMG's with everything from 1Password to Toast Titanium installers

I am actually going to get another of the 1TB drives, so I have a secondary "Diag Drive" .........

I have gone one step further, and bought 2 USB flash drives ... formatted GUID and then Super Duper copied 10.5 and 10.6 digs to them ( 10.5 is a 16 GB flash, and 10.6 is 32GB flash)

This gives me a total of 5 Diags that can be in use at any given time. Plus installers and updates for most software.

I hope this helps.
 
USB (Bus Powered) - do you mean a disk that does not have its own power supply? I started with one of those, but my iMac 24" does not show it as an available boot disk. 10.6 installed OK and the 10.6.7 combo-update did as well.

I hope this helps. - indeed it does. Thanks.
 
Whitehill said:
but my iMac 24" does not show it as an available boot disk. 10.6 installed OK and the 10.6.7 combo-update did as well.
Click to expand...

Did you partition and format the disk with the "Guid" Partition scheme before installing the operating systems?
If not, this could be why the drive is not showing up as boot-able.
 
Good point!

Intel Mac's will not boot from non GUID formatted drives. But they will show up on the desktop once the intel Mac boots normally from a GUID formatted drive.
 
Yes, I repartitioned with GUID. It does not show up on reboot holding down option. If I boot from something else, mount the USB drive, and choose it as start-up - on reboot it goes to gray and stays there.
 
Try running Disk Warrior on it, and a repair permission (And Repair Drive from Disk Utility)

If that doesnt work, may just need to wipe the drive and reinstall OS on it. Perhaps its a corrupt install.
 
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