honolulujames
New member
This isn't so much a hint as much as a discovery, but it could be useful to someone. This hint talks about getting a PowerPC Mac to start from a USB 2.0 drive, but it involves messing around with the system's NVRAM, which can be a complicated thing to do.
But today, I tried something new. I backed up my internal drive to an external USB 2.0 drive using Super Duper! (a great application, by the way). Today, just for fun, I rebooted my PowerBook G4 with the USB drive connected while holding the option key to load the boot drive selection menu. It showed my internal drive as well as my external backup drive as valid boot drives, so I chose the external drive. OS X booted successfully off of the external drive, albeit slowly. But for recovery purposes, this could be invaluable.
My system is running 10.4.8, so I'm not sure if this is a 10.4.8 feature, a Super Duper! Related thing, or if it has to do with some other factor, but it works, and that's all I care about.
But today, I tried something new. I backed up my internal drive to an external USB 2.0 drive using Super Duper! (a great application, by the way). Today, just for fun, I rebooted my PowerBook G4 with the USB drive connected while holding the option key to load the boot drive selection menu. It showed my internal drive as well as my external backup drive as valid boot drives, so I chose the external drive. OS X booted successfully off of the external drive, albeit slowly. But for recovery purposes, this could be invaluable.
My system is running 10.4.8, so I'm not sure if this is a 10.4.8 feature, a Super Duper! Related thing, or if it has to do with some other factor, but it works, and that's all I care about.
