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    Installing Mac OS X on an external hard drive

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by Emerican_Idiot, Mar 29, 2011.

  1. Emerican_Idiot

    Emerican_Idiot Notebook Consultant

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    Okay I want to install the developer's preview of OS X Lion on an external hard drive to play around with it. Is it as simple as connecting the external hard drive to my MBP and popping the OS X disc and selecting the partition on the external drive to install Lion on?
    If I do this will this effect the other partitions I have on the external drive? I have Fedora installed on another partition on the drive which I need for school, will Fedora still be bootable if I stick the drive into a computer at school?
    Thanks
     
    Emerican_Idiot, Mar 29, 2011
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  2. Budding

    Budding Notebook Virtuoso

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    You will need to format your external drive to HFS+, but otherwise, yes it is as simple as hooking up the drive and selecting it on the installation screen.

    It won't effect any of your existing partitions, unless you format them by mistake.

    After installing, you can boot into your external drive by holding down the Option key while restarting your Mac.
     
    Budding, Mar 30, 2011
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  3. kornchild2002

    kornchild2002 Notebook Deity

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    Wouldn't things be painfully slow even through a FireWire 800 connection? Thunderbolt would be fine and faster than even a SATA III connection but The 480Mbps (peak) data transfer rate of USB 2.0 and 800Mbps of FireWire 800 makes it seem like OS X Lion would take 5 minutes to boot.
     
    kornchild2002, Mar 30, 2011
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  4. Greg

    Greg Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Firewire 800 provides ~80MB/s of bandwidth which is comparable to what hard drives are capable of. That being said the guy only wants to play with the OS and it's features so even a USB 2.0 connection might be enough.
     
    Greg, Mar 30, 2011
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  5. Lieto

    Lieto Notebook Deity

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    Yes its that simple — just choose it from installation setup and you can even format it from the setup. Then connect it to your laptop and hold "option" when system boots.
     
    Lieto, Mar 31, 2011
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