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    current (Nvidia) macbooks and USB booting

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by ix9, Nov 6, 2008.

  1. ix9

    ix9 Notebook Enthusiast

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    so the previous generation Airs cant do this., not easily anyways. unless the weird security passthru-USB-device thing at the apple store was breaking it

    tested with the nightly build of Debian installer than i DD'd to a usb stick. and which booted fine on all the ghetto PCs i found laying about..some of which are 5ish years old etc

    anyone tried on the current unibody mac or new air

    what with apples proprietary Superdrive that only wokrs on the air, i cant see myself going thru the hassle of buying 2 USB drives just so i can delete OSX from a new mac.. in which case the decision to get a thinkpad got a whole lot easier

    anyone can confirm/deny the possibility?

    has anyone reverse engineered the network disc protocol stuff?
     
    ix9, Nov 6, 2008
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  2. Mercellus

    Mercellus Notebook Geek

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    I can boot an installation of Mac OS X from my WD Passport USB 2.0 hard drive without any issues using my MacBook Pro 2.4 GHz.
     
    Mercellus, Nov 6, 2008
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  3. ix9

    ix9 Notebook Enthusiast

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    yeah mac OS X. what about windows, and particularly linux/freeBSD?

    i took a USb key to the store, and it seems the mac actually _formatted_ it when i held down option on boot. /dev/sdb[125] no longer exist!!

    crayz..
     
    ix9, Nov 7, 2008
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  4. Lysander

    Lysander AFK, raid time.

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    I ran Ubuntu 8.10 from a USB stick today, but Im not sure if it will run without rEFIt.
     
    Lysander, Nov 7, 2008
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  5. Budding

    Budding Notebook Virtuoso

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    You can boot any OS supported by Boot Camp if you use Boot Camp manager to create the partition. Do note that this would require you to install OS X on the external disk first, and use the OS X installation on that disk to run Boot Camp.
     
    Budding, Nov 7, 2008
    #5