which firewire drives support booting?

D

dsnyder

Registered
I've read in the Apple Knowledge Base (Article ID 58606) that all recent Firewire equipped Macs support booting from a Firewire device, but the article implies that not all Firewire devices support being used as a boot device.

I'm looking to get a Firewire drive, and I don't care about portability, and I don't really care about size so much (they all seem to be at least 10 GB now), I only care about the ability to boot.. Can anyone recommend a drive that will work? I've been checking manufacurers websites, and the only one I have found that states explicitly that their drives can be used as boot devices is FirewireDirect, and their prices are a bit higher than what I want to pay. I've also looked at Smartdisk, Lacie, and QPS, and they don't say if they are bootable.
 
well you probably don't need this info anymore & despite all my reservations about rccomending these drives, my maxtor boots just fine in 9x. I've never even thought about booting in x because i don't think i could get it close enough to beginning of drive at this point. too full. maybe after i clean it off some in the future or when i get plus optimizer if it will move it to proper place.
 
Actually, I still do need this information. The only thing I've found out so far is that the Macally Firewire drive enclosures are not bootable. I will look into the Maxtor, though.

Thanks!
 
i guess in rereading your original post, the key is 'recent'. Are you looking to go used? otherwise most any drive you get new should handle it. I know my maxtor is a 5400 rpm. i think the development of the 7200 rpms is more recent. you'd probably appreciate the extra processing speed when booting anyway. Drives are getting so damned cheap. ok, relatively cheap - at least affordable.
I guess the one thing i would recommend is not to get too impresed with size and don't buy one much bigger than what you think you'll really need. my80gb takes forever to run diagnostics on, forever to search, forever to... get the picture? Norton products won't even finish the job with their memory allotment maxed out. I let it go too long between optimizations once and the best i've been able to do since is defragment the files. i'm planning to get a 40gb soon just to make the load on each more managable.
 
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