Booting off of iPod?

[Keith Purfield]

I'm going to install Mandrake Linux on my iMac, and I want to back up my entire hard drive (settings and all). All of it can fit onto my iPod (I only kept 7.83GB of it, after deleting a lot of crap), and I've read that people have booted into OS X off of their iPod.

I tried copying my hard drive onto the iPod, but it says that some permissions cannot be written. If this is a problem that stands in the way for booting off of the iPod, how do I get passed it? And if it isn't, how do I boot off of the iPod?

Thanks in advance,
Keith

 

[MacManDan]

Did you use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy your hard drive? Maybe that will solve your permissions woes. Though, after you make a copy, try booting off the iPod to make sure that it works before you install Linux.

I have succesfully booted off the iPod, and it was very easy. After OS X is on the iPod, you can hold down the Option key on boot up, and it will show a list of available OSes. If your iPod is connected and the OS X installation is OK on it, you can select the OS X installation from the iPod and boot from it. OS 9 works equally as well.

 

[Kwyjibo]

ok I don't know what your budget is, but i have an ipod and a fw external drive .... I have tried installing jaguar on both...the ipod was a major dissapointment. If I were you i would look into buying an external drive for backup purposes and to install linux onto....if just using the ipod is the only option in your budget then you have to but I don't recommend the ipod as a solid backup mediumm

 

[Keith Purfield]

I don't have the money for a FireWire drive, and most (if not all) Linux PPC distributions don't support FireWire, so I wouldn't be able to install Linux on one.

Thanks for your help, MacManDan. I'll try the Carbon Copy Cloner.

 

[gopher]

Re: Booting off of iPod?

Originally posted by Keith Purfield
I'm going to install Mandrake Linux on my iMac, and I want to back up my entire hard drive (settings and all). All of it can fit onto my iPod (I only kept 7.83GB of it, after deleting a lot of crap), and I've read that people have booted into OS X off of their iPod.

I tried copying my hard drive onto the iPod, but it says that some permissions cannot be written. If this is a problem that stands in the way for booting off of the iPod, how do I get passed it? And if it isn't, how do I boot off of the iPod?

Thanks in advance,
Keith

The hard drive really was not designed for constant access to data that a boot drive requires. It does a lot of caching to RAM, and can spindown at a moments notice, not to mention requires
steady power from the computer. I would only use a hard drive that has its own external power source as a backup boot drive.

http://www.aicmicro.com/ has great deals on external Firewire Western Digital drives.

 

[Keith Purfield]

I'm not going to use the iPod as a boot drive, really. Just in case I mess up, because last time I formatted my hard drive, my OS X CDs didn't work and I had to get new ones.

 

[gopher]

Originally posted by Keith Purfield
I'm not going to use the iPod as a boot drive, really. Just in case I mess up, because last time I formatted my hard drive, my OS X CDs didn't work and I had to get new ones.

If you require another drive to boot from it likely will take at least half an hour to repair. I've seen Energy Saver start running in less time than that, and that could really confuse the iPod.