Open "Carbon Copy Cloner" and select the DMG of the install disk Connect a USB drive WITH external power source to the laptop Download/Install: Carbon Copy Cloner at
#Alternative usb bootable os for mac g5 upgrade#
To upgrade OSX 10.4 on a iBook G4 and PowerMac G4 (both running Tiger) to Leopard 10.5 with only a DMG and USB drive. Your post worked GREAT, but I have a few things to add. Some people have said it's a limitation of the firmware, or Open Firmware, but that doesn't appear to be the case, unless it's a few Mac models just prior to the Intel-based Macs that can't boot 10.4.x from USB, as illustrated by some user examples above, unless there was some other issue preventing them. I do remember reading that Apple never said it wasn't possible to boot OS X from USB ports-they said it was a decision they made to prevent it, because OS X booted and ran so slowly from USB. However, as I expected, I couldn't select the drive's OS 10.3.9 volume in Startup Disk-I just got a system beep when I clicked the Restart button-and when I selected the OS 10.3.9 volume in Startup Manager, it started to boot, showing the Apple logo on a white background, and the spinning activity indicator, but after about a minute, the Apple changed to a slashed circle. It also appeared in this Mac's Startup Manager, and I could select it in the OS 10.4.8 Startup Disk prefpane. I found out that 10.4.x will boot from USB today, by surprise, when I had a USB drive in a 3.5" MacAlly drive enclosure, connected to an iMac G3 slot-loading, 350 MHz, since this model doesn't have Firewire ports, whose internal drive didn't yet have an OS on it I had booted the Mac from an OS 9.1 CD to set its clock, then I restarted the Mac, and ejected the CD, and to my surprise, the Mac then saw my USB drive's OS 10.4.8 volume, and booted from it. Some USB drives will appear in Startup Manager (what you get when you hold down the Option key at startup), and others won't when they don't, reset the Mac's PRAM, NVRAM, and Open Firmware (see my steps above), and that may allow some of them to appear in Startup Manager. Older Macs may need their firmware updated to the last version available for that Mac model, and not all USB drives might boot. €¢ Macs up through the Powerbook G4 1.33 GHz, and at least some desktops of the same vintage, and maybe a few other pre-Intel PPC Macs (not sure why not all the pre-Intel PPC Macs), will boot from USB 1.1 and 2.0 ports/drives into OS 10.4.x (at least 10.4.6 and above-I didn't try earlier versions)-NOT OS 10.3.9 or earlier. €¢ USB 1.1 and 2.0 ports/drives have always booted OS 9, on any Mac that can boot into OS 9. Sorry for the long post, and the bad english.īest I can tell, from my experience and that of people posting above: Sometimes, the drive doesn't appear in the bios, but boots.
It is working fine, however, there are strange things.
I didn't really notice anything bad, all the new hardware parts, airport, etc were detected instantly. Only the booting is slightly longer than usual. I was able to boot the system, and I can use it now, it's not really slow at all for general usage. Then, I was curious, how would my PB react to this new situation with a -supposedly- bootable version of 10.4 on the usb drive.Īnd, tadaa, as I went into the bios, the drive showed up ! I wasn't able to select it as a startup disk, either. I have tried booting the mini from the external drive, and it did not work.Įven if i held down the option key, the drive did not show up in the bios. I borrowed the mini, did the backup, and in SuperDuper, all of the booting related options were greyed out. Then, I have stumbled upon this site, and with SuperDuper, I have made a complete backup of the neighbour's mac mini. I was told by apple tech support, that booting off the external drive is impossible on g4 computers. I had a PB G4 with a dead internal hd, and I have bought an external usb 2.0 drive. My system is running 10.4.8, so I'm not sure if this is a 10.4.8 feature, a SuperDuper! related thing, or if it has to do with some other factor, but it works, and that's all I care about. But for recovery purposes, this could be invaluable. OS X booted successfully off of the external drive, albeit slowly. It showed my internal drive as well as my external backup drive as valid boot drives, so I chose the external drive. Today, just for fun, I rebooted my PowerBook G4 with the USB drive connected while holding the option key to load the boot drive selection menu. I backed up my internal drive to an external USB 2.0 drive using SuperDuper! (a great application, by the way). This hint talks about getting a PowerPC Mac to start from a USB 2.0 drive, but it involves messing around with the system's NVRAM, which can be a complicated thing to do.īut today, I tried something new. This isn't so much a hint as much as a discovery, but it could be useful to someone.
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