Boot iMac G5 from external

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Ok I know this might be posted somewhere on here, and I have googled it many times but I just wanted to verify what the best way to go about doing this was. I have the 2004 iMac G5 1.8Ghz 20" and I am currently running 10.4.11 and I want to upgrade it to 10.5, the iMac (as discussed on another thread on here) will not boot from burnt dual layer discs and I have the image file on my dads computer. I had been burning the image onto dvd+r dl, and it seems it is impossible to find those anywhere except on the internet for 15$ for a pack of three. So I decided it was time for either an external hard drive upgrade or an optical drive upgrade (both being external). My question is, what is going to be the better option. I know which ever one I get needs to be firewire, but if I could find a firewire dvd optical drive will the iMac boot from it, or will the iMac only boot from firewire hdds? I didnt want to waste money on an external dvd drive that wouldn't allow me to boot from it, I already have one of those in USB form, thats what I use to do all my burning now since the imac g5 optical drive is so slow.
thanks for any help
Oh and yes I have already tried to boot from target disc and that didn't work either. All it does is take a while to load and then spits the disc out of my macbook.
 

chscag

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You should be able to boot your machine from a quality firewire optical drive, however, that depends on the media. It sound like you're having some difficulty with your boot DVD?

Booting from a firewire hard drive would be my first choice but as I stated above, a firewire optical drive should work.

Regards.
 
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Yeah, I figured that would be my best bet. Now does it matter if I use a firewire enclosure and install one of my many SATA drives, or would it be best to just buy a "already assembled"? I am simply asking because I have had problems in the past where my USB2 enclosure with a 3.5" SATA HDD reads differently then a western digital, if that makes since.
 

chscag

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I would go for a good FW enclosure if you can find one locally. Fry's electronics has them costing anywhere from $15.00 to $35.00. I've found in the past when it comes to external enclosures that it's best to spend a little more and get a quality unit.

As far as buying a pre-assembled unit versus one that you put together yourself, that's up to you. I personally like to buy the enclosure and then add whatever hard drive I choose rather than one that's pre-built.

Regards.
 

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