This HOW-TO is a handy one for the Mac folks out there who want to run multiple operating systems, but not install them to their hard drive, all using an iPod as a bootable FireWire drive. This HOW-TO is also helpful for trying out new software (on another OS), running developer versions of Mac OS (like Mac OSX Server/Tiger) as well as having a way to repair your Mac if for some reason it can’t boot on its own.
HOW-TO use an iPod as a bootable drive
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Who in their right mind would spend £300+ for an iPod… only to use it as a bloody bootable disk!?
only to use it as a bloody bootable disk
You missing the point. Nobody would do that. But if you’ve got an iPod (and a Mac), why not sacrifice some space on your music player to make sure you can boot (and repair) your Mac in case of emergency..
One of the most overlooked feature of a portable player is the ability to use it as a harddisk. Very convenient (provides more space and is faster than burning a CD to carry data or apps around…). So the question should be:
Who in their right mind would spend £300+ for an iPod… and does not use it as a FireWire drive from time to time!?
This is a seriously bad idea.
Apple was going to add a feature called “Home on iPod” to OSX enabling people to store their Mac OS profile and documents on an iPod but cancelled it for the same reason you shouldn’t do this.
An iPod is optimised for pulling 3-6mb files off its internal drive then stopping the drive and playing from RAM. It is not capable of the kind of sustained data throughput that booting a desktop OS requires. This will wear out your iPod’s tiny hard drive very rapidly.
If you want to do this, buy a Firewire IDE case and a maxtor hard drive. Cheaper and made for the task…..
Out of interest, does anyone know why you can’t do this on an iPod mini?
Now I don’t mean to get your knickers in a ruffle, but just last week I was setting up my new cluster of Xserves. I didn’t have a spare keyboard and monitor, so I used my iPod to set up the cluster. Being from a linux background, it amazed me how easy it was to configure headless servers with only an iPod and a cable. You can rant all you want, but it was impressed. I may even go out and pick up another iPod for the laboratory (for ghosting machines of course…)
I know a company that bought a 20 gb iPod so they had a portable HD for 3 months. They were upgrading printing Presses and had to transfer 15gb data files 30 miles everyday. Since a person had to travel with the data and the Net can’t handle that much reasonably, an iPod was perfect. Both systems use Mac’s for their work so it was , transfer, Drive, transfer, create the steel plates, Drive, Run the Job.
This worked well enough till their own plate setters were installed.
“An iPod is optimised for pulling 3-6mb files off its internal drive then stopping the drive”
I disagree, I think the iPod is made to sync whatever data it needs to from the host to the internal HD. Like when you sync a 10 + GB music library. I also add about another 2 or 3 CDs to it a week, which are easily a 60 to 80 MB each. I know there are people out there that put their iPods through more use than me too without any ‘knakering’ of the unit. One of the main reasons I bought the iPod was for this Firewire Disk feature. I needed a way to carry a few gigs around and I wanted a really good MP3 player.
This should only be done in an emergency. It is fine to boot off the iPod if you have some problem with your machine but the iPod gets very very hot if the HD is spinning constantly.
Take care of the heat yes.
The HD in an iPod is not specially made for music-purposes. But notice that it’s not very fast and that it does not have any kind of (what so ever) cooling device. The harddisk is enclosed in a metal and plastic/glass surface with no way of cooling down.
I agree with ninjaMonkey, it should only be used in cases of emergency.
“Out of interest, does anyone know why you can’t do this on an iPod mini?”
OS X requires just a small bit more space than is on the mini to boot. The OS doesn’t take up that much space, it just requires it to boot.
Why are you people getting so up tight about this how-to article!?
“Who in their right mind would spend £300+ for an iPod… only to use it as a bloody bootable disk!?”
You have a 1st, 2nd, 3rd generation iPod and as you know Apple released a little remixed (4th generation?) iPod. What are you going to do throw your old iPod away? Might as well use it for something.
But on another note, before you start throwing veggies at these guys . . . . there’s nothing wrong with this how-to. They’re just exploring what you can do with an iPod, it doesn’t matter if the darn thing was designed for it or not! Why the heck do people get Linux installed on the Xbox, or why do people install Linux on the iPod, or any of those other creative people. I don’t see you guys harping on those people for using the device not as intended.
The article was pretty cool! But how about booting (bloated) Windows XP from an iPod
I booted off an iPod once (3rd generation, 20gb) in a desperate attempt to fix my fiances powerbook. Running OS X (10.3.4) off of it for the period of time that I did killed my iPod….and off it went to Apple for 2 weeks. HD had to be replaced.
Might have just been coincidence?
“But how about booting (bloated) Windows XP from an iPod
”
If you do an Unattended Install of XP you can get it down well below 2gb.. should be possible, if you have a PC with a BIOS supporting boot-off-Firewire.
Assuming the iPod isn’t rigged to only act as a Mac boot device.
Here’s a real challenge for you though – boot a mac, using Windows NT4 for PowerPC on an iPod.
If you do end up using the iPod for a booting device, make sure you do not install current builds of Tiger on it. Tiger for some reason has a history of killing the partition tables on macs, making you re-format the drive. I would be afraid to do this with the ipod… or at least ‘dd’ the drive as a backup.
i once saw somebody at work ghost a bunch of pc’s with a 1gb or so usb memory stick, they needed that and a combination of norton software to load drivers for usb so that the device could be recognized as a bootable device. why not go for that instead? I’m sure that you don’t need
what i worry about is damaging my expensive ipod.
but it’s good to see that mac os x works well in smaller devices <wink><wink>
Apple was going to add a feature called “Home on iPod” to OSX enabling people to store their Mac OS profile and documents on an iPod but cancelled it for the same reason you shouldn’t do this.
Well, it would be nice if you could put your home folder on an ipod, and then OS X had the sense to grab the necessary files and cache them on the computer hard disk (or synch if you’ve used the computer before). It would only have to take off ~/User/Library initially, then grab any files you open as you use them… Simply synch the data again when the iPod is removed, and you’d have ‘Home on iPod’ without the wear on the hard disk and overheating which working off the actual ipod would bring. Granted this is more difficult to implement but it could be very handy. Maybe one day we’ll have it.
This isn’t the same as putting a bootable system on the ipod of course, but it could be useful for people who move around computers a lot or wish to borrow their friend’s machine. (Obviously have to trust the machines you use enough to leave your files there, or have a secure delete option).
“what i worry about is damaging my expensive ipod.”
When was the last time you looked at 1 gig usb flash drive prices?
i would like it for putting class projects on from my ps 2 class. Plus i would get a music player, I get sick of burning cd’s every class period.
” Well, it would be nice if you could put your home folder on an ipod, and then OS X had the sense to grab the necessary files and cache them on the computer hard disk (or synch if you’ve used the computer before). It would only have to take off ~/User/Library initially, then grab any files you open as you use them… Simply synch the data again when the iPod is removed, and you’d have ‘Home on iPod’ without the wear on the hard disk and overheating which working off the actual ipod would bring. Granted this is more difficult to implement but it could be very handy. Maybe one day we’ll have it.”
Home on the iPod was a but different. You could plug an iPod into an OS X machine and log in from it. Your user folder and apps and things remain on the iPod (as an external drive) but instead of copying to and from you just log out of whoever is logged in and your user shows up in the login list right from the iPod. It was supposed to be in Panther (even made it to the Preview page on their site) but got pulled at the last moment.
Peter Jackson, the NZ director, was rumored to transfer 40GB of digital footage each day from his ipod, so usage as an HD shouldn’t be a problem…
It was supposed to be in Panther (even made it to the Preview page on their site) but got pulled at the last moment.
I know – perhaps due to overuse of the iPod hard drive? Caching would fix that.