Firewire Disk Mode Snow Leopard Installation not Working

HI All

New to this site.

I have been googling this a lot in the last couple of days to try and find a solution to the problem. I can summarise the problem as:

1. I have a new macbook pro with lion.

2. i have an old macbook pro with snow leopard, but with an optical drive that no longer works.

3. i want to do a clean install of snow leopard on the OLD MAC with the dodgy optical drive, to wipe all the apps etc. to give to a friend.

4. I have been trying this by putting the installation disc in my new macbook pro, then restarting it in firewire target disc mode. That works fine and as expected.

5. once in target mode, i connect the new mac to the old mac via firewire and switch on the old mac and hold the option key and then select the DVD drive of the new mac to begin booting from that disc.

This is where it starts to go wrong i think.

In all the forums i have read, after step 5 everyone says the installation begins as usual and everything is fine.

On mine, you can here the dvd drive on the new mac being accessed. On the old mac, the screen is grey with the apple logo showing. After a few minutes the dvd drive seems to stop being accessed and in addition to the apple logo showing on the old mac, the grey booting up wheel now shows..

At this stage the wheel and apple logo appear indefinitely and nothing seems to happen.

Does anyone have a clue why this is?

Many thanks in advance!!!

Possible your Snow Leopard OS Disk is damaged?

Can you boot from it with your new MacBook Pro?

Razormac said:

Possible your Snow Leopard OS Disk is damaged?

Can you boot from it with your new MacBook Pro?

Click to expand...

Hi there

Thanks for replying so quickly. Yes i can seem to boot the disk from by new macbook. i havent gone through all the motions obviously, but it takes you through the usual steps of installation.

I've used FW Target mode many times to migrate a Mac but never to do an OS install. Been doing some reading, will post back if I find something helpful.

EDIT: Found an interesting link on doing a FW Target to Lion.
http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/13/install-mac-os-x-lion-target-disk-mode/

If your old Mac is Lion capable you could try the above, or alternatively have your friend log in on your old Mac and set up an iTunes account if he doesn't have one. Then log in to the Mac APP Store and purchase and download Lion.
don't do the install. Instead, create a bootable USB and use it to Boot from Rin Disk Utility to reformat the drive and then install Lion.

Razormac said:

I've used FW Target mode many times to migrate a Mac but never to do an OS install. Been doing some reading, will post back if I find something helpful.

EDIT: Found an interesting link on doing a FW Target to Lion.
How to Install Mac OS X Lion Using Target Disk Mode

If your old Mac is Lion capable you could try the above, or alternatively have your friend log in on your old Mac and set up an iTunes account if he doesn't have one. Then log in to the Mac APP Store and purchase and download Lion.
don't do the install. Instead, create a bootable USB and use it to Boot from Rin Disk Utility to reformat the drive and then install Lion.

Click to expand...

Seems that making a bootable USB stick was a good work around!
followed those instructions and it worked!

Still dont know why the firewire method didnt work, but hey, at least something did. so thanks again!

RenderGeneral said:

Seems that making a bootable USB stick was a good work around!
followed those instructions and it worked!

Still dont know why the firewire method didnt work, but hey, at least something did. so thanks again!

Click to expand...

Glad things worked out.