External eSATA ports and booting from them

I've always known that real Macs must be externally booted using Firewire external hard disks...
But I'm wondering if a CustoMac Pro can be booted from an external eSATA HD.

How can be perfectly cloned a HD so I can boot my CustoMac Pro and restore everything - assuming I wouldn't want using Time Machine?
I've heard about CarbonCopy Cloner and SuperDuper, but will eSata port capable of booting my CustoMac Pro?

Thanks
Michael

I haven't tried to boot from my system's eSATA, yet. However, I have booted from my FW400 port. But, only as a backup exercise. CCC doesn't copy the boot partition, just the Mac OS X partition.

The problem is that Chameleon doesn't recognize FW or eSATA, only the internal and USB drives. So, I found a solution in another forum thread which I can't remember where, but here it is:

Boot iBoot from a CD(DVD) & hit the Space Bar. The "boot:" prompt should come up and type -v -f rd=diskySn where "y" is the eSATA disk # and "n" is the partition number.

To get the "y" and "n", use the terminal command "diskutil list". Good luck.

wavesequence said:

I've always known that real Macs must be externally booted using Firewire external hard disks...
But I'm wondering if a CustoMac Pro can be booted from an external eSATA HD.

How can be perfectly cloned a HD so I can boot my CustoMac Pro and restore everything - assuming I wouldn't want using Time Machine?
I've heard about CarbonCopy Cloner and SuperDuper, but will eSata port capable of booting my CustoMac Pro?

Thanks
Michael

Click to expand...

If your total install is less than about 12Gb, you can use CCC or SD to clone your HD to a 16Gb USB flash drive. I use one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-USB-Flash ... 337&sr=8-3

CCC to the flash drive and install chameleon to it and you have a handy recovery tool that doesn't take up much space. I basically use this as a final resort of the last fully updated clean install I did to fall back on when all else fails.

I also have a pair of these: http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Portable- ... 620&sr=1-4 that I use for full clone of post installing xtools and all the other software. These have multiple versions, depending on what I was testing at the time.

Be aware, however, that booting from a USB drive is sssslllooooowww.

Don't have an external eSATA HD, so I don't know if it is bootable or not.

Not sure as I can't test this but the way I understood eSATA is that most inputs share bandwidth from the internal SATA. So with that being said, if your external eSATA connected drive shows up in BIOS I would think that you could set the boot priority to that external eSATA drive. Another thing that you could try if the former doesn't work is use an eSATA expansion bracket that would plug into any open internal SATA connections and set the boot priority. All eSATA and SATA cables do the same thing, save for the eSATA connector. Correct me if I'm wrong. :

macaddictcr said:

Not sure as I can't test this but the way I understood eSATA is that most inputs share bandwidth from the internal SATA. So with that being said, if your external eSATA connected drive shows up in BIOS I would think that you could set the boot priority to that external eSATA drive. Another thing that you could try if the former doesn't work is use an eSATA expansion bracket that would plug into any open internal SATA connections and set the boot priority. All eSATA and SATA cables do the same thing, save for the eSATA connector. Correct me if I'm wrong. :

Click to expand...

No, you are right. To find out if you can boot from a drive, connect it up and boot to BIOS. Click on the HARD Drive Boot Order selection to get a list of hard drives. If it shows up in the list, then you can boot from it. Also, when you hit F12 at the boot prompt and select hard drives from the device selection screen, if it is listed, then you can boot from it. Provided, of course, that you have a bootable OS installed on it.

Going Bald said:

macaddictcr said:

Not sure as I can't test this but the way I understood eSATA is that most inputs share bandwidth from the internal SATA. So with that being said, if your external eSATA connected drive shows up in BIOS I would think that you could set the boot priority to that external eSATA drive. Another thing that you could try if the former doesn't work is use an eSATA expansion bracket that would plug into any open internal SATA connections and set the boot priority. All eSATA and SATA cables do the same thing, save for the eSATA connector. Correct me if I'm wrong. :

Click to expand...

No, you are right. To find out if you can boot from a drive, connect it up and boot to BIOS. Click on the HARD Drive Boot Order selection to get a list of hard drives. If it shows up in the list, then you can boot from it. Also, when you hit F12 at the boot prompt and select hard drives from the device selection screen, if it is listed, then you can boot from it. Provided, of course, that you have a bootable OS installed on it.

Click to expand...

WONDERFUL