carnage

Installing Tiger if you don't have a DVD drive.

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger now comes on a single DVD by default. While this is more convenient than the disc-swapping required by the 3 Panther CDs, it's tricky if you're trying to install Tiger onto an older machine that does not have a DVD drive.

I found an article by Jaharmi describing FireWire Target Mode (which I've also gone over) and a new technique involving using an external FireWire drive to create a dedicated partition that is a Tiger DVD disk image. Basically, you use Disk Utility to Restore the DVD to a spare partition you don't mind erasing. Handy if you have an extra FireWire drive lying around. I tried it this morning, and discovered a few things:

• The process requires you to erase a partition on your FireWire drive. This may require some thinking ahead.
• If you create a new partition, make sure you're generous in allocating space. Disk Utility will select the next lowest convenient number (based on the 1k = 1012 bytes formula, I expect) even if you try to get clever with your partitioning. The Tiger DVD takes up around 2.5 GB, so I tried to allocate just above that. The Restore process failed partway through, saying that there was some kind of file error. Giving the partition a full 4GB did the trick.
• If the Restore process does fail, both the source and destination volumes will remain unmounted. The visual indicator for this is pretty subtle (the volume names are greyed out in the list on the left, generally where you aren't looking) and you might be puzzled because further attempts to Restore will give you a "file not found" sort of error. The solution is to re-mount the target drive partition, and then use the File menu to eject the source DVD. Re-insert the DVD and it will mount.

The point of all this was to see if I could install Tiger onto my Wallstreet PowerBook via XPostFacto, which only has a CD drive. My quick experimentation with the new Tiger/FireWire partition described above resulted in a kernel panic. I'll have to look into this further, but for now I think the answer might be to send away for the Tiger CDs (see the "Media Exchange Program" box in the right column).

Installing Mac OS X via FireWire Target Mode.

Since the Power Macintosh G3 AGP, all Macs have supported FireWire Target Mode, the successor to the somewhat clunkier SCSI Target Mode. (Here's some history on the two.) Hold down the T key when your more modern Mac starts up, and it will magically turn into a FireWire device, visible to any FireWire-enabled Mac that you hook it up to. Any drives (optical included) will be at the disposal of the host machine.

MacOSXHints has a page that's chock full o' hints on how to use FireWire Target Mode on various machines.

This should be handy for installing Tiger onto the B&W G3 and the iMac G3; I was going to wait for the RAM upgrade for the latter, and haven't really figured out why the former keeps failing with the Tiger DVD.

Granite Digital FireWire products.

I was reading Macintouch this morning and saw an unusually positive endorsement for Granite Digital, which makes FireWire and other storage-oriented products:

[Louie Berry] My suggestion to him would be take a hard look at Granite Digital's large product list of FireWire enclosures, bridge boards, cables, and complete single units and RAID arrays. Throughout the last several years of reported FW problems, I've never had one instance of trouble from Granite stuff. They write their own firmware for the chipsets and I don't believe an update has been required since the release of 10.2. I use Granite enclosures on all manner of Macs from legacy machines to the latest G5s and move them from machine to machine; OS 9 to Tiger.

For years Granite was the leader in top quality SCSI cables, terminators, RAID, etc. and switched their main thrust to FireWire about five years ago. I have no connection with them except as a satisfied customer for about 10 years.

I don't have any of their stuff, but I may give them a try for a new 3.5" FireWire/USB case and maybe a bridge board for this little 2.5" drive enclosure project I'm thinking of...

G-SAFE.

I just got turned on to G-Technologies, who appear to make "professional strength," highly-engineered storage products. They appear to be setting their sites squarely on LaCie. All of their stuff looks like it's made of aluminum, and they have some innovative features, like cooling fins on their fanless drive cases.

They've just announced the G-SAFE, which is a 2-drive RAID 1 array, which means you get the much safer mirroring, rather than the higher speed and capacity (but zero redundancy) of RAID 0. (I'm just now really learning about RAID these days, and will have a more complete rundown of the various options soon.)

They don't have a page on their site yet; just a PDF. The G-SAFE is supposed to be on sale now, but I can't find it anywhere. It starts at $499.

G-Technologies G-SAFE brochure PDF

Thanks, Goldie!