Hi Peter, I suspect they only have USB external drives in stock? There are plenty of Quad interface external drives available.
Purchase an external drive with Multiple I/O interface support. Quad interface drives are able to handle USB 2.0 plus FireWire 400, FireWire 800, and eSATA interfaces. Don’t you have the same model MacBook Pro as mine? 2011 which has Thunderbolt Port & FW800? Don’t go to just a USB 2 External Drive… Have a look at the Performance comparison chart USB 2.0 /Firewire 800 /USB 3.0 / Thunderbolt at this link: <http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/intel-thunderbolt-in-apple-macbook-pro-explained-931050> Yes, your MacBook Pro can boot from a USB 2.0 external drive, but I would strongly recommend FW800. Cheers, Ronni 17" MacBook Pro 2.3GHz Quad-Core i7 “Thunderbolt" 2.3GHz / 8GB / 750GB @ 7200rpm HD OS X 10.7.2 Lion Windows 7 Ultimate (under sufferance) On 12/12/2011, at 1:02 PM, Curtis Peter wrote: Hi So, to carry on from my last email, and being in a regional centre (Kalgoorlie) I can't get any IDE drives for an old enclosure I have, they say these drives are too slow and out of date! I can't get a SATA hard drive with a firewire connection, they say these are out of date being surpassed by USB2 and USB3, which they say is quicker anyway. (I'm sure I don't have USB3 in my MacBookPro anyway) My question is - can I boot my MacBookPro with USB2? Regards Peter -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug>
