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Boot from USB 3.0 External HDD? (Without Internal HDD)

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Hi,

I've been searching through the forum posts on booting from a USB 3.0 HDD and it seems like this was not possible a couple of years ago. Has anything changed? My understanding is that the ability to boot from a USB 3.0 HDD is dependent on the BIOS. More specifically it's dependent on the USB 3.0 controller on the motherboard.

Does anyone know if you can boot from USB 3.0 HDD (without an internal HDD) on the recommended Gigabyte motherboards?


Thanks again,
Fred
 
Hi

How long ago it was when you researched for that?

I can run Ubuntu on my old ass laptop and my H87N without a problem...

When you install the OS from unibeast choose the flash disk as the main partition. (Not the same flash you have unibeast on)
Setup your bios to boot first for a usb device, and it will read the boot loader straight from your flash disk... From there just choose the OS that you installed on your flash disk and done...

Just a heads up, it will be very very slow... Even usb 3.0 is very slow compared to sata, specially because you can't do parallel transmission, meaning sending and receiving data seamlessly... If you use a Firewire or thunderbolt you'd be better off.

And also, as far as I recall you need at least a 16gb on your flash...

Even running ubuntu from a flash disk 3.0 is painful and slow, for a quik **** around good idea... To use for more than 30 min I would just partition my HDD to dual boot (if applicable)

Awe
 
I was only talking about an external USB 3.0 *HDD* (hard drive) not a flash drive (and I wasn't talking about installation... should have made that clearer). But if the Gigabyte motherboards can boot from a flash drive connected to USB 3.0 then I'm sure they can boot from a HDD as well.

A USB flash drive can be very fast if it has a fast 4k write speed. For example the Sandisk Extreme USB flash drive is very fast indeed. Almost as fast as a HDD. But a regular USB drive is so slow it's unusable.

Fred
 
sorry...

was writing so much kinda lost focus there...

Bottom line is, it will work, external HDD or flash disk, it will be slow tho. Like i said, even ubuntu that is way lighter than OSX mavericks already is a pain and a half with an external media.

If i may ask, why can't you separate abit of your main hdd for OSX? Are you planning on having a portable OS?
 
Are you sure OS X is slow with external media? I'm using an old mac when I write this comment and I only have an external drive, no internal. It's slower because it's USB 2.0. I'm not sure I believe you when you say that OS X can't handle external drives because it's bloated. I guess it depends on what you mean by slow. According to tonymacx86 himself HDD are too slow even when they are internal. He suggests SSD for running the OS. Anyways, I will find out soon enough when my CustoMac parts come in :). I like external because it makes your system modular and portable.
 
I am also trying to boot from a USB 3.0 disk, but to install Mac OS Mavericks onto a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H and i get the dreaded 'still waiting for boot device' error. Obviously my USB 3.0 is not being detected by the installer. Anyone know how to fix this?
 
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