Install Leopard With An External Hard Drive

thanks for the instructions on installing leopard from the ext. hard drive. just one more thing, does the install progress just as if it were installing for the dvd? in other words, will i lose any data? the restore feature has me a little concerned. thanks, djp

The hard drive partition that you put the image on will be erased - so it is better to do it on an empty partition. The best way to do this is to partition around 8 gigabytes on an external hard drive and use this as the destination drive.
Other than that, the installation is identical to installing from the dvd. You will be given the choice to either upgrade from a previous OS X version or make a clean install by erasing everything.

Thanks for pointing this out. I wasn’t clear in the original post. I’ll update the post to make it clearer.

Hi
I did everything fine, but when i get to the last step to restart from the start-up disk. it’s not there, there’s only network start-up, and the original tiger 10.4, but not leopard 10.5. i have usb ipod video 30gb, all the file that were extrat is on there, but it can not boot. any sugestion.

Do you have any idea how to update winxp/bootcamp after making such an install? Thanks!

Guynel - you may need to repartition you external drive to use the Apple Partition Map. I hope that helps.

Guynel,
i just had the same problem as you and in disk utilities just repair the mac os x install dvd and it should work.

I have tried everything that has been suggested here and I can not get it to work.

I have a:

1.25GHz G4
1GB Ram

I am trying to install it off of a External USB hard drive. Any other suggestions?

@SaucE: Which step isn’t working for you?

I get to the point of selecting the Boot drive. The external drive doesn’t show up as an option.

I think I found a way around my problem, problem being trying to boot from USB on a G4. I put the Leopard image on my external drive (iPod in disk mode), then booted off my Tiger CD. Once in the Tiger installer, I used the disk utility to partition and format the drive. Then I used your steps to add the files to the partition from the Leopard image. Set the boot drive to be the one with the Leopard files, restarted and the Leopard installer fired up. Its still installing but seems to be going perfectly fine. I hope this will help others that were having problems.

Feel free to add my solution to your tutorial if you wish, I have a feeling it will take away some of the frustration other G4 Mac users like myself were or are having.

@SaucE - Great! I’m glad you got it to work. I left a note in the article to let people know of how helpful the comments are.
Thanks for leaving a note on how you got it to work - I’m sure it will help others with the same problem

Will its official, it worked! Posting this from within Leopard now. If it wasn’t for your tutorial, I wouldn’t have got this far, thank you very much.

Congrats SaucE!

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for the comments SaucE, it has helped me install Leopard on my 17″ Powerbook G4 which was having problems with installing from the DVD.

Your instructions were perfect.

Thanks to everyone,
Colin

I am planning on buying an external hard drive but before I do so I just wanted to make sure this definitely works from a USB drive and not just Firewire. Can anyone confirm this? Thanks

@Jordan: Yes, it works with a USB drive for sure.

Hi Jordan,

Absolutely works, I have successfully updated two systems in the last day via this method. I think the only potentially confusing thing from these discussions is that the external HDD is only used to store the .dmg file.

Once you have the .dmg file on the external HDD you need to launch the Tiger install process and then create an extra partition on the actual mac not the external HDD (this is what I initially did).

Then restore the .dmg onto the new partition on the mac and set it to be the start up disk. Worked perfectly for me.

I guess the method I used means you can’t do a upgrade, needs to be a full install as creating a new partition means you will erase everything on the mac.

I hope that helps.

Regards,
Colin

Colin, are you saying there’s no way for me to perform the upgrade process and retain my data without the actual DVD?

Hi Jordan,

The way I did it, I don’t think you would be able to upgrade (please correct if I am wrong - anyone). My mac only had 1 partition on it. So when I went to create a second partition it needs to wipe the info from the 1 partition to create the 2 partitions on the Mac. On the 2nd partition is where I did the restore.

Does that make sense?

This is only the way I have done it, maybe there is another way?

Regards,
Colin

@Jordan: This is going to give you the same exact installation as the one you would get from the actual DVD. I think there are three options - upgrade, install from scratch but keep a backup of current user files, or install from scratch and delete everything.
You can always try this and if you don’t see the option that suits you, exit the installation.

@Colin: That sounds correct. I think you would need to install it on the same partition (where the OSX is currently installed) in order for it to allow you to upgrade. That could be why you weren’t able you didn’t have the option to upgrade.

If you have a Intel Mac, creating the partition on the External drive within Tiger should allow you to upgrade. Intel Macs can boot from USB, the PPC G4 can’t, thats why I had to do mine different.

When I did the install, I had no room left on my internal drive to partition it (Not sure I can once if was already on large partition). I only had music and a few pictures so I just did a backup and did a fresh install. Once the install was done, I booting into Leopard, deleted the partition I had put the install DVD onto and expanded the install partition to fit the rest of the drive.

Since my last post on Dec 29th. I have tried everything on my Power G4 PPC, nothing works when i get to the part to reboot from start-up disk. I did what Sam & Brett post on Jan 1&3, it didn’t works.

But I got it to work using an externatl hardrive with firewire. it does not working using ipod or external hardrive with usb. only with firewire for me. using my fire hardrive the partition shows up on start-up disk, and i simply reboot from that partition, then boom it works.

p.s. SaucE can you please explain step-by-step your post on Jan 4th. it seems to work for everybody, but i’m confusing with it, since i’m not much of a Mac guy. try to post it like Admin post his process. thank you

DISCLAIMER: I cannot guarantee that you will get the option to do an upgrade via this method, so please backup all you data before hand.
1. Plug in your external hard drive.
2. Copy the image file (ie. Leopard.dmg) over to your external drive.
3. Insert your Max OS X 10.4 Tiger disk into the drive. Then open up System Preferences and select Startup Disk. Select the Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger DVD drive then restart your Mac.
4. Once your Mac has booted into the installer, go to Tools on the menu bar and select Disk Utility.
5. Select the internal hard drive of your Mac and create 2 partitions. One of 10GB and the other of the remaining hard disk space. (I am not sure if the Disk Utility will allow you to resize a current partition. If it does, make the new partition 10GB. This may allow you to do an upgrade instead of a fresh install.)
6. Once the disk is partitioned, Click on the 10GB partition you just created.
7. Click on the “Restore” tab.
8. In the “Source” field, select the image file (such as leopard.dmg) from your external hard drive.
9. In the “Destination” field, drag the 10GB partition from the Disk Utility drive list on the left onto this field.
Note: Anything on the partition will be erased and replaced with the installation files for Leopard.
10. Click on restore. This may take awhile.
11. Once its done, open up Startup Disk from the Tools menu.
12. Select the 10GB partition with the Leopard Install files on it.
13. Click Restart. The Leopard installation will begin from the external hard drive. This installation is identical to installing Leopard with a DVD.

NOTE: I used some of the text from the original tutorial word for word. I believe I got everything in th e right order.

What am I doing wrong!!! I install leopard correctly on my 15′powerbook ppc. Right now I am using the same exact step to try to install it on a 15′ powerbook it’s just not working. this time i keep getting error message once i’m ready to click restore.

I sometime got this error: Restore Failure “An error (2) occurred while copying. (no such file or directory) when i re-do the steps over i would get this message.
Restore Failure “An error (16) occured while copying. (resource busy).

Can anybody please tell me what exactly i did wrong this time around. because i got to to work previously with a firewire harddrive with no problem. this time it’s not even letting me to restore it to move on.
thank you

I can’t get past the part where it asks what drive to install leopard to. It only shows the 2nd partition on my external drive, not my internal hard drive, which is where I would like to upgrade leopard. Anyone have any suggestions?

hi all,

i am having problems installing leopard too. i am using a macbook and an ipod nano 8gb. i get the image on my ipod and go to start-up disk, select to boot from my ipod but when i restart (and click alt when i hear the chime) all i can select is my macintosh HD.

i need to say i have no partition on my hd and nor on my ipod..

hope anyone can help me!
cheers

i have to add i have try to partition my ipod but it doesn’t let me and i don’t know if there is any way i can save the option of GUID partition when i get to it.
i think by default it was on the one below, for PPC.

isn’t that odd though since i have an intel mac and my ipod was only ever installed on to this?

cheers again

hm.. I left some comments to get help this morning but apparently they have been deleted (I am not sure why?).

anyway, I’ll try this again. so I’ve been trying to install leopard using my ipod as well. I have a macbook and an 8gb ipod nano, none of them is partitioned. actually when I’ve tried to partition the ipod it wouldn’t let me.. and that is the only way to change the Apple partition map to GUID, isn’t it?

because i’ve mounted the image on the ipod several times but once I restart from the start-up disk in system preferences I can’t get to make it work. it just starts tiger as per usual..

can anyone please answer this (and not delete my request of help)?

cheers,
sodax

SAME PROBLEM AS jmoz38’s

Any help???? Thanks.

I can’t get past the part where it asks what drive to install leopard to. It only shows the 2nd partition on my external drive, not my internal hard drive, which is where I would like to upgrade leopard. Anyone have any suggestions?

Same thing happened to me. My message got deleted too. Here it is again.

I have the same problem as jmoz38’s.

Please help!

I can’t get past the part where it asks what drive to install leopard to. It only shows the 2nd partition on my external drive, not my internal hard drive, which is where I would like to upgrade leopard. Anyone have any suggestions?

Messages don’t get deleted. It takes time for them to get approved due to a lot of spam advertisement.

I’m not sure why you are getting that problems - hopefully someone else will know and help you with it here.

how would i go about doing this with a g3 iBook. its a 800mhz but theres a program called leopardassist that “tricks” it into thinking its 867mhz

SaucE,

Something you said in your list above confuses me - steps 5 and 12/13 seem to contradict each other.

5. Select the internal hard drive of your Mac and create 2 partitions. One of 10GB and the other of the remaining hard disk space.
12. Select the 10GB partition with the Leopard Install files on it.
13. Click Restart. The Leopard installation will begin from the external hard drive. This installation is identical to installing Leopard with a DVD.

Am I being obtuse or does this not make sense? It seems like restoring the .dmg to an internal partition would make that internal partition the install disk.

I understand that you could install Leopard on the bigger partition of your internal drive from the smaller partition of your internal drive. But wouldn’t you be left with Leopard on the larger partition of your internal drive, stuck with a 10 gigabyte partition containing the installer that you could not get rid of without erasing the entire internal drive?

Hi!

I did the same as the instr. but I got the message you can no intall leopard from this drive use a dvd.
What do I do?

FOR Guynel

I assume given the timing that you’re trying to install the DMG file that Apple just published for Leopard. I had the same problem, and the solution was to Eject the disk image before trying to burn it or restore it to a disk partition, otherwise it is “busy” when you try to Restore it to a partition in Disk Utility to get the thing install-able.

for Dumitru… Thanks man it works. once i eject the dmg file, and click on restore it. it works fine, and i install it without no problem.
you the man.

I manage to restore the image to an external USB drive, and also select it then in the startup disk menu. However, when it does retart, it just sits there with the spinning wheel. I have left it for over an hour and nothing changes

Any ideas?

phila67

Hey guys, you can boot to usb drive on a G4, when you start up just hold down the option key and it will give you a screen that will give bootable options, even usb drives will show up, and it will boot from them, it’s a little slower but boots just fine. hope this helps.

Hi everyone!

I have followed this tutorial but it doesn’t work.. I cannot do the 10th step. I’ve read the SaucE solution, but it doesn’t work too.

So, I cannot the external hard drive (USB 2.5″) in the Startup Disk tool. The strange thing is that i find it in “Disk Utility” and also if I hold down the option (alt) button on startup (I see a “EFI Boot” Drive).. if I select it, it seems to work but it doesn’t. It is loading something and it takes a lot.. After 20 minutes still nothing..

Can anyone help me?

Sorry for the bad english..

Dario

I was forgetting.. It is a Macbook Pro!

well… it should work, i have a macbook pro too and i do it all the time, it works fine as long as it’s a good install on the external. FYI intels will boot from either an apple partition map or a GUID partition, apple says otherwise but it will i’ve done it. if you lert me know what you did exactly maybe i can figure out where the problem is, well… i’ll do the best i can.

DISCLAIMER: I cannot guarantee that you will get the option to do an upgrade via this method, so please backup all you data before hand.
1. Plug in your external hard drive.
2. Copy the image file (ie. Leopard.dmg) over to your external drive.
3. Insert your Max OS X 10.4 Tiger disk into the drive. Then open up System Preferences and select Startup Disk. Select the Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger DVD drive then restart your Mac.
4. Once your Mac has booted into the installer, go to Tools on the menu bar and select Disk Utility.
5. Select the internal hard drive of your Mac and create 2 partitions. One of 10GB and the other of the remaining hard disk space. (I am not sure if the Disk Utility will allow you to resize a current partition. If it does, make the new partition 10GB. This may allow you to do an upgrade instead of a fresh install.)
6. Once the disk is partitioned, Click on the 10GB partition you just created.
7. Click on the “Restore” tab.
8. In the “Source” field, select the image file (such as leopard.dmg) from your external hard drive.
9. In the “Destination” field, drag the 10GB partition from the Disk Utility drive list on the left onto this field.
Note: Anything on the partition will be erased and replaced with the installation files for Leopard.
10. Click on restore. This may take awhile.
11. Once its done, open up Startup Disk from the Tools menu.
12. Select the 10GB partition with the Leopard Install files on it.
13. Click Restart. The Leopard installation will begin from the external hard drive. This installation is identical to installing Leopard with a DVD.

NOTE: I used some of the text from the original tutorial word for word. I believe I got everything in th e right order.

THIS WORKS! first didn’t worked to boot from my external hard drive and install it.. i was getting : Mac os x can’t install from an external drive.. something like that.

But second method works !! thanks dude

forgot to say : i have a macbook 13.3 core2duo 2Ghz 1GB 80GB

I want to use an external hard drive to create a separate startup disk running Leopard. Meanwhile I need to keep the existing hard drive running 10.3 because I have a Final Cut project in progress and cannot upgrade anything. I have a licensed copy of Leopard and want to install it on an external drive to use as an alternate startup disk. However IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT MY CURRENT STARTUP DISK DOES NOT GET UPGRADED and remains on 10.3.

Can anyone offer me guidance? It seems like I could partition the external drive, install Leopard on that partition, and then just select it as my startup disk when I want to use Leopard. When I want to work on my film, I can simply select my original 10.3 startup disk and reboot.

Does anyone know if this will work?

it will work just fine, just startup form your install disk with the external plugged in and if your computer is an intel mac make sure your external is GUID partition, if it’s a power pc which i assume it is if its running 10.3, format the external as APM and install the OS right to the external. (it will let you choose which drive)

Thanks, Mattej. I have a G5 dual 1 ghz (ca. mid-2004). Will I need a firmware update? I hope not because it could compromise my 10.3 system on the internal drive.

I didn’t see any options for GUID or APM partitioning in Disk Utility. I just chose “Mac OS X Extended.” Also, I tried to make a 16 GB partition but it just defaulted to a 113 GB partition on the 120 GB drive. Will these settings work or do I need to re-partition the drive? By the way the drive is an older LaCie 120 GB firewire model. It may be 6 to 8 years old.

no, you won’t need to update anything, it’s fairly painless, i’ve installed leo on several externals, just make sure it’s partitioned as an apple partition map otherwise when you go to choose the drive it won’t show up. then after the install is all finished just choose it as the startup disk from your prefrence pain. good luck!

oh i forgot your running 10.3, yeah mac os x extended is fine, you should be set to go.

Should I choose the external as the startup disk BEFORE running the leopard installation? Or will I have an option to choose it after the installation starts? Currently I cannot see the external among the choices for a startup disk, even though I have partitioned it.

no, wait until after, it won’t let you before because it has to see an OS on it. once OS X is installed you will be able to select it.

my powerbook can’t seem to detect my external hard drive (WD Mybook via firewire) when i do the start up step. tried pressing option while rebooting and all i see is my built in hard drive. how can i make my powerbook detect my external hd so i can install leopard?

you have to open diskutility and format is a osx extended, then it will show up. click on the drive (the top one that has the capacity beside it) and click erase, then select osx extended journaled. then boot from the install disc and you should be able to select it. it won’t show up while holding the option key becouse there is no OS on it. it has to see a System Folder.

I used the instructions by SaucE, which worked for me on my G4. One thing I can’t seem to find. I now have 2 partitions; 10gb with the installation files/70gb with the actual OS, installed. How the heck can I merge these 2 partitions, ’cause I don’t need the 10gb anymore…

i’m not sure if this will work on macs not formatted as GUID but you can try it, open disk utility,

1. click on the drive in the left hand column that has the 2 partitions on it, (it’ll have the drive size next to it)

2. click on the partition button

3. click the partition under ‘volume scheme’ that you want to get rid of and click the little minus button under that window.

it should let you delete it then hit apply and when it’s done if your main partition isn’t resized just resize it in the window under volume scheme and hit apply again and it should resize it.

now like i said i haven’t tried this with the PPC macs yet so if someone already knows if it will work or not just chime in.

I can delete the 10gb partition, but it will show up as ‘free space’. It’s impossible to resize the second partition to fill the entire disk.
So I’m stuck with 10gb’s of free space now, which are just lost… There has to be a way!

This is wat I got now, http://img359.imageshack.us/img359/3313/picture1cu8.png

actually that’s not bad, it just means osx hasn’t recognized the rest of the space yet. try this first… open disk util and click on the partition that os x is on, then click verify disk, if it says that it needs repaired, pop in the install disc and boot from it, open disk util and click on the partition on the left, then click repair disc. then it should show up right…

if not you’ll have to use 3rd party software. do you have a GUID partition or are you running a PPC? you can try these apps.
http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iPartition.php or…
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/drive_genius.php

ipartition is probably the more user friendly and it will let you burn a bootable disc so you can partition your boot drive and it’s non destructive so it won’t hurt your current install.

how do you merge both discs (one and two) together to create a single image file (am i missing something)?

since i was only able to restore disc one, i was prompted for disc two to be inserted during the installation.

I tried SaucE’s method and it worked perfectly thanks a lot sir.

How were you able to transfer the 6+gb file to your ipod? ipods formatted in fat32, which can’t handle files over 4gb.

anyways, i tried using an external hd, and my ibook detects the drive is there, but will not detect the leopard.dmg or any other files on the drive.

What do i do?

Worked!! like a nice charm!! very cool everything just great!! thanks a lot you are a life saver!!

sorry to say i could not get it to work.
i have it on my external hard drive.and it will not come up on my start up disc any ideas?

am i missing something?

http://www.adrianmils.co.uk

I’m having the same problem as some above. NOBODY has addressed this issue. Using a G4 Powerbook, booting from a firewire drive, when the Leopard install asks for a Destination to install Leopard to, I have NO options. When I click “utilities” at the top and go to disk utility, I see that it hasn’t loaded the partition for my internal HD. Only the External Firewire drive shows a partition.

Why is this happening???? Does anybody know? Thanks!

~Tim

Actually, I just left the screen up for 10 minutes and when I came back, my internal drive was there!

I´ve gone all the way untill the instalation because it´s freezing on the middle. tried 3 times already.

any ideas?

“I’m having the same problem as some above. NOBODY has addressed this issue. Using a G4 Powerbook, booting from a firewire drive, when the Leopard install asks for a Destination to install Leopard to, I have NO options. When I click “utilities” at the top and go to disk utility, I see that it hasn’t loaded the partition for my internal HD. Only the External Firewire drive shows a partition.

Why is this happening???? Does anybody know? Thanks!

~Tim”

if it’s a g4, you need to make sure that it is formatted as APM not GUID. or it won’t show up as an option to install to.

Gosh, I went to best buy and bought a 500 GB firewire western digital external hard drive. Partitioned and followed the instructions above. Selected the hard drive as a start up disk but it doesnt seem to work and all it does and go straight back to the 10.4.x OS. I tried repairing the partitioned disk containing the Leopard but still dont work. I am using 1.25 GHz processor and Powerpc G4 with 512 DDR SDRAM. Someone please help me. I cant read anything from my flask portable hard drive because it is a usb 2.0 and my laptop dont support it. I figured installing Leopard would solve this problem.

Thanks

“I manage to restore the image to an external USB drive, and also select it then in the startup disk menu. However, when it does retart, it just sits there with the spinning wheel. I have left it for over an hour and nothing changes”

I am having the exact same problem. What can I do to fix this?

Is there any way to do this while inside of Windows?
By using software like….
-MacDrive 7
-PowerISO 4.2
-Nero

{quote}
“I’m having the same problem as some above. NOBODY has addressed this issue. Using a G4 Powerbook, booting from a firewire drive, when the Leopard install asks for a Destination to install Leopard to, I have NO options. ”
{quote}

I had the same problem on my MacBook Pro.
I had to wait for about ten minutes to be able to select my internal hard drive.

So, my advice is, wait wait wait…the drive will appear. It did for me.

Best regards
Infoerik

Just one small point that I wanted to add. If you are installing from an external hard drive, be sure to use firewire or USB as e-Sata doesn’t work, at least it wouldn’t for me.

I followed the instructions - best not to rush - and it went smoothly! I’m on an imac

The only thing that was different was that when I was prompted to select where I wanted Leopard to be installed my HD wasn’t present, so I exited and restarted and it then appeared the second time.

Many thanks!

I have a 1.25 powerbook G4 and am trying to restore from a USB Portable HDD. it keeps saying”An error (-119930868) occurred while copying. (Operation not supported)”. and i don’t know wat to do i’ve formatted again and again. restarted it just won’t restore for anything. someone please help!!!

Hi SaucE and all others,

I know you guys are talking about Leopard, but I have the 4 disk version of the Tiger upgrade. I have a PowerMac G4 and running OS X 10.3.9. How can I upgrade if I have the 4 disk upgrade version of OS X 10.4? To be clearer, I have 4 separate dmg’s (install disk 1, disk 2, etc.) Your directions worked for disk 1 (installed from a separate internal hardrive) but when that was done, it asked for disk 2. Evenntually I had to reinstall the original OS X 10.2 that shipped with the G4.

Is it even possible to install from 4 separate dmg’s???

Thanks!!!

hi

installed perfectly on a intel macbook, just have to make sure your usb drive is partitioned as extended (journaled) and as GUID

when i open start up disk i can not see the external hard disk to boot from there what can i do?

Quick question for everyone who has successfully installed Leopard this way…

During installation, did the installer try to perform the consistency check?

You know, this part: http://iuseapple.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/installleopard09.jpg

(Mine didn’t.)