Macbook - Buying New Hard Drive: Need to boot from External Drive
Hi,
I am buying a 160gb hard drive for my Macbook to replace the 60gb factory hard drive, but the drive that I am buying will not be formatted. I am buying an external drive enclosure, but none of the ones that I have found will support up to 160gb, so what I want to do is install the unformatted 160gb into my Macbook and place the 60gb into the enclosure, and then run OSX off the 60gb (now) external drive, then format the 160gb and put all of my files on it. How do I boot into OSX on the external drive?
Also, I have read that, to be able to boot from external drive, your motherboard's BIOS has supports booting from USB.
Hang in there and someone more knowledgeable will answer it soon.
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Mac Specs: Black Macbook C2D 2GHz 3GB RAM 250GB HD
It's actually quite simple. What you can do is stick the 160GB hard drive in your Macbook and use your installation discs to get a fresh install of OS X. You can use Disk Utility during the setup process to format the 160GB drive. Then when you have OS X up and running, just pop the 60GB drive into the enclosure and connect it to the Macbook. You should be able to just drag stuff onto your new drive.
Mac Specs: Black Macbook C2D 2GHz 3GB RAM 250GB HD
Definitely. Think about it. How else would people format their drives when swapping in a new one since both OEM and retail drives are unformatted?
All you need to do is pop the install disc in, hold C as you're booting, and it'll start the OS X installation. Then look to the top for Disk Utility and you'll be able to format to your heart's content :black:
