Hi Geoff, I haven't tried booting from an SD card, but the way it works for bootable attached drives (as opposed to DVD/CD drives) when you boot up holding the Option key is that you're focused on your regular Macintosh HD, and any press of the right or left arrow key cycles you to the next bootable device.
Usually, I have only one other bootable drive attached, so it doesn't matter whether I press the right or left arrow key -- the first press changes focus to the other drive, and the second press takes me back to Macintosh HD. If you have multiple bootable drives attached when you boot up holding the Option key, then you cycle through the list of drive with each key press. You're supposed to be able to drag and drop the drives into a preference order so that your first press of the right arrow key selects the top preferred alternative boot drive, then the next press of right arrow selects your second preferred alternative boot drive, and if you only have three boot drives, a third press would take you back to Macintosh HD -- your default boot drive. As Sarah said, you can just press and arrow key and then press return to figure out which is which. (She must have a lot of drives attached, or have partitioned her drive into multiple bootable sections *grin*) For the rest of us, just wait a bit after holding down the Option key at boot up, then press your right arrow key once to change the boot drive, then press return. When I use Carbon Copy Cloner I give my bootable clones a name -- or else I think it comes up with the manufacturer's name for the drive. So once you've booted up, you can tell that the "other" mounted drive is "Macintosh HD" if you've booted from the clone. You should also be able to tell if there are no user files directly mounted that you're in the SD drive, I think. HTH. Cheers, Esther On Jul 28, 2012, at 11:02 AM, Sarah Alawami wrote: > Not that I'm aware of. I just try and memorize which is what. Clumsy but it > works. it would be nice to have it boot from the card reader but via a key > holding down, but allas not yet. > On Jul 28, 2012, at 1:09 PM, Geoff Waaler wrote: > >> Hi Esther and others, >> >> Once my $6 8GB sd card arrives from Amazon, I intend to use that media to do >> a clean installation of ML. >> >> From a little Googling, I learned that holding the option key during >> power-up presents a menu of bootable media. I assume this menu would be >> presented before VO starts, so I'm wondering if there is a way (other than >> trial and error with the arrow keys) to bypass this menu and boot from my >> MBP's SD card slot, as one can for the DVD player via option-c? >> >> TIA and best regards. >> Geoff >> <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to [email protected] You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/>
