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    Anyone ever boot off a USB thumb drive? (MacBook)

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by James1Wilson, Jun 26, 2009.

  1. James1Wilson

    James1Wilson Newbie

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    Can I boot off a USB thumb drive with a MacBook?

    Linux is what's on the drive, but it's not wanting to boot.

    Thanks
     
    James1Wilson, Jun 26, 2009
    #1
  2. Budding

    Budding Notebook Virtuoso

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    Mac OS X will not boot unless the boot device contains an installation of OS X or Boot Camp. What you will have to do is turn your pen drive into a Boot Camp partition, by either cloning the existing Boot Camp partition on your Mac HD onto the pen drive, or by using some hack.
     
    Budding, Jun 26, 2009
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  3. James1Wilson

    James1Wilson Newbie

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    Alright, so there's no way to run Linux or anything with OS X? The harddrive is broke.

    Thanks man.
     
    James1Wilson, Jun 26, 2009
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  4. Budding

    Budding Notebook Virtuoso

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    You can boot from the OS X installation disc and install OS X on a new HD or pen drive. You can then run the Boot Camp Assistant and attempt to install Linux on the Boot Camp partition.
     
    Budding, Jun 26, 2009
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  5. James1Wilson

    James1Wilson Newbie

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    I can install OSX to a drive? Nice.

    Any idea on how big OSX is installed?
     
    James1Wilson, Jun 26, 2009
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  6. Budding

    Budding Notebook Virtuoso

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    Leopard uses about 10GB just to install, but Snow Leopard is supposed to use about half of that. It therefore makes more sense to use an external HD or a normal HD instead of a pen drive.
     
    Budding, Jun 26, 2009
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  7. jackluo923

    jackluo923 Notebook Virtuoso

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    If all else fail, buy vmware fusion, run the linux off the usb drive in the virtual machine.
     
    jackluo923, Jun 26, 2009
    #7