Confused over booting from external drive

[Sawday]

Following the death of my Freecom external drive I've been looking for an alternative. I'd almost settled on Seagate goFlex Desktop drives - a 2TB for Time Machine backups and a 1TB (or another 2TB) for Carbon Copy Clone backups with the intention of being able to boot from the latter should my iMac fail. (Both of these drives are on a mega offer at Amazon right now)

However, I've just been told by Seagate that I cannot boot from their drives. Are they correct or misinformed?

As an aside, I note that Seagate produce a mac specific version of their GoFlex Desk external drive (Aluminium colour not black), but this does not appear to be available in the UK - has anyone bought one of these in the UK?

 

[dobby]

All I know is that I buy my self a standard Samsung USB drive 2 TB .
Formatted in 2 partitions using the diskutility of MAC one for the system and one for my data .
And yes I can boot from from USB drive by holding down the Option key before the booting is starting until the options come up
Coloning was done Carbon cloner

 

[RavingMac]

Following the death of my Freecom external drive I've been looking for an alternative. I'd almost settled on Seagate goFlex Desktop drives - a 2TB for Time Machine backups and a 1TB (or another 2TB) for Carbon Copy Clone backups with the intention of being able to boot from the latter should my iMac fail. (Both of these drives are on a mega offer at Amazon right now)

However, I've just been told by Seagate that I cannot boot from their drives. Are they correct or misinformed?

As an aside, I note that Seagate produce a mac specific version of their GoFlex Desk external drive (Aluminium colour not black), but this does not appear to be available in the UK - has anyone bought one of these in the UK?

I have bought both the Mac specific and windows version and once you reformat the Windows version I see no difference between them. (FWIW I reformatted the Mac version too so I could enable Filevault2).
Never tried booting from one, and not sure I believe you couldn't. But, you'll have to get a recommendation on that from someone else.

 

[Sawday]

All I know is that I buy my self a standard Samsung USB drive 2 TB .
Formatted in 2 partitions using the diskutility of MAC one for the system and one for my data .
And yes I can boot from from USB drive by holding down the Option key before the booting is starting until the options come up
Coloning was done Carbon cloner

Thanks for this. Having had one drive go down, I don't want to put my faith into just one drive hence my idea of getting two.

 

[Sawday]

I have bought both the Mac specific and windows version and once you reformat the Windows version I see no difference between them.

Usual one is black, mac version is silver - at least on the Seagae site that I'm looking at.

 

[RavingMac]

Thanks for this. Having had one drive go down, I don't want to put my faith into just one drive hence my idea of getting two.

Agree, I currently have four of them.

Usual one is black, mac version is silver - at least on the Seagae site that I'm looking at.

Colors are not specific to the version (at least I think not) I have silver, black and blue. Will have to go back and check which were originally Mac versions (at least one was silver, so you may be right).

 

[Sawday]

Agree, I currently have four of them.

Colors are not specific to the version (at least I think not) I have silver, black and blue. Will have to go back and check which were originally Mac versions (at least one was silver, so you may be right).

I think we're talking about differnt machines. I think you may have one of these...
Portable hard drive | USB hard Drive | FreeAgent | GoFlex Ultra Portable Drive | Seagate

or similar

I was talking about these...
Desktop hard drive | External Desktop hard drives | FreeAgent | GoFlex Desk | Seagate

and specifically this one...
STBC2000100 | Seagate

 

[RavingMac]

Actually, I have none of those.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001FWBV4G/?tag=macforums0e4-20

I have four of the above in 320 and 500Gb flavors.

 

[Sawday]

Actually, I have none of those.
Amazon.com: Seagate FreeAgent Go for Mac 320 GB USB 2.0/FireWire 800 Portable External Hard Drive ST903203FJA105-RK (Silver): Electronics

I have four of the above in 320 and 500Gb flavors.

I hadn't really looked at these as I wanted a larger drive, but the price here in UK (less than £50) makes me want to investigate further...

 

[RavingMac]

I hadn't really looked at these as I wanted a larger drive, but the price here in UK (less than £50) makes me want to investigate further...

So how did your quest end (or has it yet)?

 

[Sawday]

So how did your quest end (or has it yet)?

Have bee nwithout internet for 3 days, just back up so quest continues when I've caught up...

 

[Sawday]

So how did your quest end (or has it yet)?

Finally decided on this Iomega eGo Desktop Hard Drive (Mac Edition,2TB): Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories. Mostly great reviews and barely more expensive than the 1TB version.

 

[RavingMac]

Finally decided on this Iomega eGo Desktop Hard Drive (Mac Edition,2TB): Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories. Mostly great reviews and barely more expensive than the 1TB version.

Let us know how it works out; looks like an interesting unit.

 

[Sawday]

It (Iomega eGo Desktop Hard Drive (Mac Edition,2TB): Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories) arrived and at a bargain price from Amazon, just £108. Neat little unit and a full 2TB free space showing - no bloatware at all although varions software can be downloaded from their site. My next question is about whether to configure this as just one partition or two for CCC and Time Machine so I'm just about to read up the FAQs on that one..

 

[RavingMac]

How are you liking the drive?

I put one in my Amazon shopping cart and am tempted to buy one both as a fixed extension drive for my Mac Mini and as a FireWire Hub.

 

[Sawday]

So far so good. It is recognised instantly I switch it on - even if mac is running, which the Freecom never did. There is a slight hum when the disk is spinning but then it is sat right in front of me next to my imac stand. Connected via the FireWire800 that came with it (it also came with FW400 and USB) and is very fast, so no complaints there.