> While it's been said here that firewire is best between external and
computer for the use of Time Machine, it wasn't mentioned that it's
necessary if you wish to put OS-X.5 on the external and start the
computer from the external OS. You can't boot from an external drive
that's only connected with USB2.
Ah, but now you can.
We tested that last week. A friend who's a Mac tech at a large credit card bank needs to
be have a portable bootable drive to test his Macs if there are any issues. He did a basic
installation of Mac OS X, 10.5.5, on an 8GB USB2 flash drive, including some diagnostic
tools, and used it as the boot drive on a new MacBook Pro. We ran the MBP for about an
hour to give a presentation, running it from the OS on the flash drive. The presentation
and a video were on the MBP, as well as the applications.
It ran better than expected. He's testing it this week on his new iMacs. Will find out how
that went when he gets back from skiing.
FireWire is much faster and more reliable than USB2, but, again, we're stuck with the
lowest common denominator if FW is eliminated completely. The only Macs that can take
third party cards are the MBP and Mac Pros. I hope they keep it on new iMacs since many of
us use them for video and don't want to give up speed and reliability. My videocam works
better with FW.
Betty
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