Installing OS X Panther on external lacie drive

I have a mac mini which I have OS X on. The OS was loaded as a netinstall image. It all works fine.

I have connected an external firerwire hard drive which I want to install another copy of the OS onto.

I insert the OS X install disk and start of a new installation. It then requests that I reboot the machine.

After rebooting the grey apple logo appears, but after a couple of seconds it kind of jumps to the right slightly and then two black marks appear next to it.

It isnt the disk as I got a copy off a collegue and that one does the same.

Any ideas?

Ed

that is weird, so does it finish booting? you have to start up while holding the C key with the disc in the mini and the external hd on, then when it asks for the install location, the external should be listed there. why do you want to install the os on the external? you could just make a bootable backup of your current system since it sounds like there may be a problem with those discs. and it is illegal to make copies of os install discs, or install it on more than one mac.

Try booting to that volume with extensions off, or try plugging the FW into another Mac to see if it'll boot.

Also try starting up in single user mode. cmd+s to see where it bombs out.

While booting hold down option. See if your FW drive shows up on the screen.