Re: Creating a bootable Firewire disk - how many bootable partitions?



Here's a snippet of the MacFixit article. It's hidden behind their
paywall but Google's cache revealed it as I was searching for info.

Quoting MacFixit
Use Disk Utility (you can do this with Tiger) to repartition the drive.
As you do the repartitioning, take great care to specify the correct
partition scheme! If you're using a PPC machine, you want the Apple
Partition Map (the default). If you're using an Intel machine (because
you have no PPC machines), you want the GUID partition scheme; it is
easy to neglect this step, and if you do, and you accidentally use APM,
you won't be able to make a Leopard bootable disk. We suggest three
partitions:
o A 10 GB partition to hold the clone of the Leopard DVD.
o A 30 GB partition to hold the Leopard system.
o All the rest to hold Time Machine backups.
*

As described in the earlier tutorial, insert your Leopard
installer DVD into the computer and make an image file from it. Now
"restore" (clone) the image file to the first partition on the external
firewire drive.
*

The first partition on the external firewire drive is now
bootable: it is a clone of the installer DVD. So boot from it! The
effect is just as if you had booted from the installer DVD: the
installer will offer to install Leopard. Do an erase-and-install onto
the second partition of the external firewire drive.

At the end of the installation process, the installer will
automatically reboot the computer from the Leopard system it just
installed on the second partition of the external drive. You will have
to go through the usual kerfuffle about creating an initial admin user,
declining the opportunity to subscribe to .Mac, etc. When you're all
done, you'll be running Leopard from an external drive.

I think that I'll just install the 10G partition, leaving the rest of
the drive for Time Machine. As Warren Oates pointed out, there are
sound reasons to have the installer DVD on a bootable partition.
(Faster installs on new internal drives?) I just can't rationalize the
30G partition given that I have two bootable internal drives - one
Leopard, one Tiger.
.



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